Lenah milestone INDUSTRY FEATURE Lenah Game Meats turns 30 this year, and has come a long way from its origins back in 1993. Established as a one man show all those years back, this iconic Tasmanian company now has its signature product, Lenah wallaby, on over 100 restaurant menus per year and 200 supermarket shelves. John Kelly, the founding proprietor, is extremely proud of the progress the company has made. “In the early years we went to every food fair we could, giving out taste samples of our wallaby, and we’d spend a large part of the day listening to people tell us ‘aw yuck, ya can’t eat that’. We went back to Agfest last year for the first time in over a decade and spent three days nearly in tears listening to people tell us how much they love our products, what we do and urging us to keep doing it.” Lenah harvests 1000 wallaby per week (‘Lenah’ is a Tasmanian Aboriginal word for wallaby) state-wide and process them in its premise at Rocherlea, where it now employs 16 people and takes stock from 12 commercial harvesters. Wallaby has gained acceptance as part of Tasmania’s fine food basket. It also has wide support for its environmental credentials, wallaby for example don’t emit methane, making it a carbon free food option.
Lenah was recently a Telstra Business Award finalist in the environmental sustainability category on the basis of the environmental benefits wallaby harvesting delivers.
“We now have a category of consumers who call themselves ‘wallatarians’, people who take the ethical choice to make wallaby the only red meat they eat,” Kelly says. Lenah also recently started processing wild Tasmanian deer, following 10 years of lobbying to get the State Government to allow it. This is expected to generate a new growth spurt as well as help farmers desperate for a solution to the expanding wild deer problem. The TCCI and THA’s support was a big part of
42 Tasmanian Hospitality Review April/May Edition
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