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When Shanghai-born engineer David Zhang (pictured, left) set up his first small tofu factory in Western Sydney’s Greenacre in 1991, he had his sights set on Australia’s Asian food market.
At the time, the quality of Asian food in Australia was poor, says Zhang, and he saw a niche for a healthy option.
Using soya and wheat products from Australia and doing all the manufacturing locally, Zhang gradually built a customer base for fresh tofu, beancurd, noodles and dumpling sheets.
“Slowly, slowly customers came to us,” he says, and they kept coming back wanting more.
Within the next few years, he had opened a distribution centre in Melbourne, and expanded operations to Brisbane, WA, the NT and Tasmania.
The company faced a major setback in 2006, when, after moving their factory to Sydney’s Bankstown, it burnt down. Their ability to quickly rebuild and restart production led to them winning a Phoenix Award that year.
When Woolworths asked to stock the product 11 years ago, and Costco a few years later, Evergreen (whose products are made by Unigreen Food Pty Ltd) was well and truly on its way.
Now, David’s son Kerry (pictured) has joined the company as Evergreen’s managing director.
Constantly updating their factories
David Zhang’s engineering background means he is constantly innovating and updating his factories, combining biology and food science to keep ahead of competitors.
With a reliance on automation, the company is still quite small, with under 100 employees.
“The thing with automation is that the quality is very consistent,” says son Kerry.
The Zhangs put their success down to always striving for the highest quality and most nutritious food, and adapting to fit the market’s needs.
They spend very little on marketing, because as David says, “make the best products and the market will come”.
“We’re still a niche market,” says David Zhang, “The majority [of the market] is Western food.”
But Zhang says they’re currently in the lucky position of being able to capture a growing demand for vegetarian options, with soya a high protein alternative to meat.
That said, Zhang says the smell, taste and texture of soya products is a challenge for Western palates.
Investment in R&D to meet market needs
As a result, the company has invested significant amounts of money this year in building a new state-of-the-art R&D factory on its Bankstown premises.
“We know what the Asian market wants in Australia,” says Kerry Zhang. “We’re one of the top sellers for tofu and noodles for Asian people.”
“Now we’re trying to adapt that to the western audience, especially for hard tofu. For example, the taste: western people don’t like the soy flavour being too strong, and they prefer a chewier texture, so we’re doing R&D on that.”
Funding for the new facility, which is due to come online in six months’ time, has been helped by St.George Bank.
Kerry Zhang says St.George’s relationship with the family’s business has been very solid.
“They have always been supportive of our requests since we switched to them a year and a half ago.”
St.George Relationship Director, Industry Banking NSW, Daniel Galofaro said “It’s more important than ever to have a strong relationship with your bank manager. In a lot of instances, we’re there to have ideas bounced off of us and bring our industry expertise into the relationship. Whether it’s new machines that expand the business and help it grow, or investment in cost-saving innovations, we know that the real way we can make a difference is by understanding our customers and their operations to add value beyond just finance.”
“It’s such an exciting time to be helping David and Kerry with their plans for expansion with their new R&D facility.”
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