Life?s sweeter now

Sweeter Banana Co-op grower and market development officer Doriana Mangili in the packing shed.

After years of playing second banana to Queensland competitors, six Carnarvon banana growers decided to take matters into their own hands.

In 1994 they formed the Sweeter Banana Co-operative. It was a smart move because the co-operative has since expanded to be owned and operated by more than 30 small family-run farms and has established a central packing shed, as well as creating the original sweeter "Carnarvon Lunch Box Banana".

The benefit of the packing shed is that growers can focus on growing their plantations while the shed takes care of marketing and packing their bananas.

The packing shed also provides consistency of quality and volume for the market as well as having more control over price.

"This is a big operation and therefore we have the economies of scale a small grower wouldn't normally have in Carnarvon," Sweeter Banana Co-operative market development officer Doriana Mangili said.

"Members using the shed are also saving a lot of paperwork in bags, cartons, organising freight and ordering pallets and crates.

"Quality is the key because the market demands it - without a high level of quality our product won't sell.

The shed employs 25 to 50 workers depending on the time of season with the majority being backpackers who tend to be good workers.

"Employees are paid on performance, as the job is very fast," Doriana said.

"When we are busy the shed will box 2500 boxes a day with around 70 bananas per box.

"In winter this comes down to around 3000 to 4000 thousand boxes a week."

For co-op members it costs about $10 to bag and box the bananas through the packing shed.

Co-op members also benefit from reduced freight and carton prices because of the buying power of the co-op.

Doriana said membership included a lot of benefits, including carting the bananas from each member's plantation, washing and dehanding the bananas and transporting and marketing the bananas.

"The whole process of ripening and packaging bananas on farm is inefficient but if you don't value your time it is possible to make more money by doing it yourself."

Those using the shed also had access to a member-only website that showed growers how their banana bunches were graded.

They could then compare their grading to what the top three growers for that day, month or even year received.

The grading goes into details such as the quality, quantity and number of cartons per bunch.

The website aims to give complete transparency to co-operative growers, as well as providing market reports allowing access to the most up-to-date information on prices and where the market is heading.

It receives up to 50 hits a day.

The Sweeter Banana packing shed sends bananas to Perth daily, so they are as fresh as can be when they hit the supermarket shelves.

This is considerably fresher than Queensland bananas, which are, on average, 10 days old before they reach Perth, let alone the supermarket shelf.

The co-operative is looking at buying its own shed in the long term. It is also looking for opportunities to value-add to bananas that are not sent as fresh produce, such as teaming up with a WA dairy to produce a Sweeter Banana Yogurt.

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