POMEWEST
3 THREE Brothers, Dean, Murray and Tom Collins.
Collins Bros Orchard History
C
BY NARDIA STACY EXECUTIVE MANAGER, POMEWEST
ollins Bros Orchard is a multi-generational family business that is dedicated to producing premium apples. This family is passionate about the Western Australian apple industry, feel privileged to be in the best growing region in the country, and consider themselves fortunate to call Collins Siding, Pemberton, home.
This story goes back in time to 1906 when Paddy Collins bought the original homestead property. Since then, five generations have lived on the farm, with four generations currently calling the farm home. The oldest resident is Tom Collins, 94, who the last remaining child of Paddy. The youngest is Murray’s youngest son Jacob, who is only six months old. When Paddy first purchased the property, he made the decision to plant apples. Once his sons Bill, Jack and Tom came of age, they took over the farm becoming known as “Collins Brothers’. Kevin, son of Tom, then took over the business and bought out the other family members. Today, the name ‘Collins Bros’ still rings true, as again there are three Collins brothers, (Murray, Tom, Dean) managing the farm. Dad, Kevin, is now largely out of the orchard and oversees the family’s cattle herds. Murray, the Managing Director, is focused on the orchard and business development. Tom oversees the packing shed and has led their recent diversification into avocados, while Dean is involved in day-to-day orchard management. The operations are supported by four other permanent staff and a number of casuals throughout the season.
The Collins Bros Orchard is the largest permanent netted orchard in the state.
The idyllic location of this family-owned farm reflects the family’s narrative of producing a standard of excellence in their crops.
It is that level of professionalism that sees each piece of fruit carefully nurtured, so when it leaves the packshed, it takes with it the family’s reputation. The reward is seeing the public actively seek out their products for quality. This story is about the essence of family, and working to a value proposition of a truly genuine Western Australian brand.
72
WA Grower SPRING 2020
It's pretty remarkable to think that the Collins farm is still one and the same that the current three brother’s great
grandfather, Paddy farmed over 100 years ago. It’s also interesting for them to reflect on how much orcharding has changed in those hundred years and yet on the flip side, how some aspects have hardly changed at all.
Lessons learned along the way As Albert Einstein said ‘In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity’. Orcharding is not always rosy! After a very bad season, to which they suffered a near total loss of fruit from hail, they diversified the business and took to share-farming potatoes and harvested the farm’s blue-gum plantings. This was done to pursue the opportunity to mitigate future risk in the form of installing permanent hail netting. The next year, another hailstorm came along and again destroyed over 80 per cent of fruit outside of the net. Less than 20 per cent of fruit under netting was damaged, which immediately demonstrated the immense benefits of netting with permanent structures. Since then, this risk management strategy has been the focus of the family business model. Although initially, a large financial outlay, netting the orchard has brought many benefits. Most importantly, they have the comfort of knowing that they can consistently grow a high-quality product and have supply security to expand the farm and apple orchard as opportunities present. Murray believes that they now have the largest permanent netted orchard in the state.
