AGT Foods Australia celebrates 15 years of success

On September 6th, 2007, a Canadian grain company named Alliance Pulse Processors, the operating company of modern-day AGT Food and Ingredients, purchased a closed grain cleaning facility near the small town of Horsham, Victoria. After only a half-decade in operation, AGT was already becoming a worldwide leader in pulses, rapidly growing from its single facility in Regina to five across Saskatchewan and North Dakota at the time. Located in the heart of one of Australia’s strongest agricultural growing regions, this newly-acquired Horsham facility was AGT’s first outside of North America and Turkey and represented one of the first glimpses of AGT’s potential to become a truly global giant in agri-food.

With the purchase complete and the Australia Milling Group officially founded, the Horsham facility was refurbished and fired back up, taking in lentils grown by local producers nearby, processing them, and bagging them up for international sale. A whopping four people were hired at the facility to start, and Jeremy Schmidt, Horsham’s current day Production Manager, was one of them—or, to be more accurate, he was one of the first rehires.

“I worked at [Horsham’s previous owner] for about two years before the plant closed down, then worked at a trucking company for about six months until AGT came along,” says Jeremy. “Russell [Greening, former GM of Horsham] called me and asked me back, and I’ve been there ever since.” Since 2007, Jeremy has done many different jobs at Horsham, starting off in logistics before moving to grain buying, then the Production Manager role he carries out today.

“Things were a lot smaller back then. We didn’t have the splitting mill then and our tonnages were quite light comparatively.” (For reference, Horsham moved about 5,100 tonnes in 2008, about 11% of the site’s current output today.) “Today we’re much bigger, and the splitting plant meant we brought in a lot more employees.”

Of the four original Horsham employees, Jeremy isn’t the only one still standing—Hayden Fleay was also there on day one, working as a hand in the yard he manages today. “I was born in Western Australia and came out East when I was 20 to play football, then ended up getting hooked up with this job by one of my mates,” says Hayden. “I didn’t have any ag background, but now it’s my career.”

As the site matured, so did the product it produced—and the Australian grain industry as a whole. “Lentils weren’t widely grown in Australia when we started out, but now they’re one of the biggest crops today,” says Jeremy. “Really, there weren’t any pulses at all, it was mostly cereal crops and canola. I think we helped change that.” Newly-bred pulse varieties helped pulses begin to flourish in the different Australian climate, improving quality and yields and helping tonnages improve across the business.

After the Horsham project’s success, AGT continued its Australian campaign by purchasing two sites in neighbouring South Australia: Bowmans and Kadina, which joined the company in August and September of 2010. Located about an hour down the road from the Port of Adelaide, Bowmans and Kadina gave AGT easier access to ship grain westward towards markets in Mideast and the Indian subcontinent. In August of 2011, AGT headed northward, purchasing its facility in Narrabri, New South Wales, bringing the count up to four production facilities on the continent. In 2014, AGT moved its Australian head office to Toowoomba, Queensland, down the road from Brisbane on the Gold Coast.

Since then, Australia has kept the tonnages moving, averaging around 200,000 tonnes of shipped grain every year over the past decade. In April 2022, the Aussies completed their very first bulk vessel shipment, an enormous achievement for a mostly landlocked company. After an incredible coordinated effort with trucks running day and night, the Chios Victory departed the Port of Adelaide with 27,500 tonnes of faba beans and 3,350 tonnes of red lentils in its holds and a feather in AGT Australia’s cap.

With a successful 15 years behind them, Division Head Michael Brittain is excited for what the future has in store for AGT Foods Australia—including some firsts for the company, even this far into its life. “We’re shipping our first containers of chickpeas from Central Queensland to Bangladesh soon, which will be our first from that part of the country. We’re also going to be the first to move a container through our shipping partner’s new facility in Yamala [also in Central Queensland] to the Brisbane port. It’s a great sign of how much our business has expanded and grown,” says Michael. “On top of that, we’ve started purchasing and shipping freight out of Western Australia, which gives us a presence in five states across the country. We’re busy, busy, busy—just the way we like it.”

“While we started out small 15 years ago, today we’re thankful to have a fantastic group of staff across the country who are helping it all be purchased, stored, sold, moved, packed and executed,” added Michael. “Our success is their success.”

Congratulations to AGT Foods Australia on a successful 15 years in business!