MAMSP 2009 - Brisbane, Queensland

Parmalat
Brismark

The day started of very early in Brisbane, The group was all on the bus and headed off by 6:00 in the morning. The early start was to get to the Brisbane markets, where we were greeted by Vanessa Kennedy, she very quickly informed us that the we needed to be there this early in order to see the market at its busiest. The Brisbane Market complex has more then 3000 people working in different sections of the market. We were issued with hi-vis vests, and warned to watch out for fork lifts, although Vanessa assured the girls in the group that the fork lift drivers won’t run over them.

As we had our full guided tour of the large premises it was easy to observe that they was many characters and traditions involved in the market, all of the characters were happy to stop and talk to Vanessa and the group. We dodged through the many fruit and vegetables stalls and made our way to the office buildings to enjoy a traditional market place breakfast of a hamburger and settle in ready to hear all about the Brisbane Markets.

The first presenter was Anthony Gribben who is a wholesaler at the Brisbane market, trading as B & G Holdings. Anthony had started working at the markets approximately 20 years ago as a fork lift driver and had worked his way up to a wholesaler. Anthony informed the group of the different aspects of the market and who is involved. The major role of the wholesaler within the market is purchase the produce from the farmers and on sell to the retailers. The challenges facing the wholesalers into the future are to retain staff, comply with government legislation, and improve communication methods with producers.

Following the interesting presentation from Anthony, Evan Bared from the Promotion and Marketing department at Brisbane markets informed us about the campaign that the Brisbane markets is running to increase the volume of fruit and vegetables that the children of Brisbane are consuming. This involved the free promotional days run at primary schools in conjunction with the local green grocer to get the younger generation into consuming more fruit.

The Final Presenter was Carl Licostro from the Garden of Eden fruit shop, known as the man in pink. Carl talked us through aspects and challenges of the running a retail shop that requires the products to be changed regularly. The main points of differentiation from the Garden of Eden when compared to supermarkets is that all the fruit and vegetables have been select fresh and are of the highest quality. The presentation from Carl was very informative was able to answer any question which the group had on the fresh food industry.

After the morning at the Brisbane Markets, we headed to our final destination of the Gold Coast. The bus trip seemed to be very quick to the Gold Coast, however this may have been because the group was using it as time to catch up on the sleep missed. We settled into the hotel and admired the view of the waves and beach goers before heading to the Jet Boating. As the boats started you could hear the power of the large turbo engines roar into life, this was followed up by the slightly crazy driver who managed to narrowly miss poles in the water and spin the boat around while doing approximately 80km/h. This was amazing way to finish the day in the sun in Surfer Paradise.

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