The cracking of macadamia nuts can again be heard from the Macksville Industrial Estate now that local company Macnuts has restarted its processing plant.
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General Manager Vince Collins said they were very proud to be returning to their roots with an organic product.
"We reckon we've got a niche market in the organic processing, and we are now also employing a few more locals, in fact we've doubled our staff, which is a benefit for the Valley," he said.
The iconic co-operative well-known for its delicious flavoured macadamia nuts and other products like spreads and oils has purchased $200,000 worth of new equipment and has five new employees cracking, sorting and packing the nuts.
Visiting the factory on Tuesday, Federal Member for Cowper Pat Conaghan said the company's expansion was good news for the Nambucca region.
"I congratulate the board and management for Nambucca Macnuts for making this decision to value-add to their business to create benefits not only for the valley's current seven organic macadamia nut producers, but for the broader local economy," he said.
Macnuts has been in the macadamia processing industry since 1998. In 2013, they began outsourcing the cracking of in-shell nuts to a company with better economies of scale, Stahmann Farm Enterprises in Toowoomba.
However, now that local growers are producing most of Australia's increasingly popular organic crop, it made sense for Macnuts to take the specialised processing back in-house.
Vince estimates that they will handle about 150 tonne per year from organic growers, which will be about 95 per cent of what they process. A small component of their processing will involve non-organic nuts, with the equipment receiving a thorough cleansing after they have been processed.
"We will schedule non-organic at certain times, for small runs only, " he said. "Before we do any organic, the equipment has to be clean. We can do organic, and then run a conventional batch, but we've got to completely clean down before we do organic again."
The region has about 48 growers in total, with conventional nuts contributing 450-500 tonnes of the yearly output. Macnuts will continue to redirect the larger scale processing of these to Stahmanns.
"The growers bring the nuts into us, we collect them until we've got a 30 tonne load and send them off to another processor in Toowoomba, Stahmann Farms, and then we buy the conventional product back here for our value-adding," Vince said.
He said that since starting processing organic macadamias three weeks ago, they have had approaches from Queensland and NSW organic macadamia growers also wishing to have product processed.