THE Midfield Group has won the Powercor Business of the Year Award at last night’s Powercor Warrnambool Business Excellence Awards.
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Judges said Midfield was a highly-disciplined business that produced consistently-high products and was at the forefront of the meat industry.
It had thrived in a highly- regulated industry.
Midfield managing director Colin McKenna accepted the award at last night’s Lighthouse Theatre ceremony, saying he did so on behalf of his “wonderful” staff and family.
“Without them, there would be no Midfield,” Mr McKenna said.
“We have people that get up early in the morning and work until the job is finished.
“That is what made our name, that is what makes us proud.”
He said while he was regarded as “the boss”, he did not believe he was.
He had two sons working in the business and good managers leading departments, he said.
The group employed about 1100 people throughout Australia, but was Warrnambool-born and bred, Mr McKenna said.
“Warrnambool has been my life,” he said.
The business had received tremendous support from the south-west community, including livestock producers and local government, Mr McKenna said.
He was confident Warr-nambool would grow to 50,000 people and present other opportunities for good, hard-working businesses.
Mr McKenna said Midfield had started out small and he hoped its growth would be an inspiration for the many small businesses represented at the awards. Midfield Meats was formed about 1976 when Mr McKenna, then a stock and station agent, entered into an arrangement with a local abattoir to process his livestock and offer it for sale in Melbourne.
The business agreement proved fruitful and led Mr McKenna to buy the municipal abattoir in 1988.
Midfield has since grown into one of Australia’s largest-capacity meat processing plants on a single-shift basis, recently processing a record 1002 cattle in one work shift.
It is a paddock-to-plate operation and a major player in the domestic and export red meat markets.
The group’s beef, lamb, veal, mutton and by-products go to markets throughout Australia and the world.
At the heart of Midfield’s operations is the state-of-the-art Warrnambool abattoir, which has a throughput of more than two million beef and small stock annually.