Advance Australian Manufacturing With Alba Cheese

A quick look at the history of Alba Cheese in the Melbourne suburb of Tullamarine unearths a story of the finest Italian cheesemaking traditions brought to life on Australian soil when brothers Mario and Gaetano Bongiorno established the business in the early 1980s. 

Over the course of almost 40 years, Alba Cheese has experienced growth, with their award-winning cheeses – including ricotta, parmesan, provolone, fior di latte, pecorino and fetta – in high demand across the food service industry and in retail settings. 

John Bongiorno is the Operations Manager at Alba Cheese. He shares his insights with Integra for our Advance Australian Manufacturing initiative on how they navigated their way through the Coronavirus pandemic, while highlighting a stark challenge to Australia’s primary production future that requires some urgent attention.

How would you compare your business now to pre-pandemic?

John Bongiorno: “Thankfully, business has remained pretty similar because we have a lot of different markets and segments [that we service]. We had peaks and troughs through the pandemic and things like that, but we deal with manufacturers, retail, distributors and food services. Initially, food service was impacted heavily and the retail was much better. Now, we're seeing a shift back to the food service. So, besides the initial start of COVID where it was a massive impact for us being in the food industry, it has remained pretty strong right throughout and we actually saw some growth.”

“In order to maintain staff, we had to look at ways that we could be more efficient. We used to produce six days a week. Now, we generally produce five days a week and that sixth day is just an option if we're really busy. It's really dependent on if we can get the milk for it, or if we can work it, so we condense it into a five-day week and try to give the staff a little bit less hours. Especially now with all the staff shortages around, I don't want to overwork them too much.” 

What would you say have been the greatest challenges of the pandemic for your business as a manufacturer?

“They changed as we moved through the pandemic. Initially, we were faced with reduced demand for the product, because of all the closures that were going on. A lot of the restaurants we supply were closed, and that led to having too much stock on hand.”

“Another challenge was the contracts we have with our farmers — and we've got good relationships with them — but we get raw milk directly from farms every day. So, whatever milk the cows produce, and cows didn't take a break during COVID, we had to get all their milk. And we've got like two to three days [maximum] to use that milk, so we had to be nimble”

Director, Gaetano Bongiorno

“We were lucky enough that we managed to find some regular customers who could buy milk off us each week— not massive amounts but just enough to reduce the amount that we had to produce because we weren't selling as much — which isn't something that we normally did in the past. We also found some customers out there that wanted raw milk — some smaller cheese factories who don't buy direct from the farms because it's too much [product for what they need]. So yeah, that was one pretty important thing that we got sorted.”

“As we progressed through the pandemic, and even still now, we've had staff shortages for the past six to nine months; supply chain issues and delays and pricing pressures. It's lucky if we go for a week or two without getting a price increase from one of our suppliers, so it's just never-ending. And the staff shortage has become a massive problem across nearly every industry. Every customer, every supplier I talk to is having the same problems with staff. It's improved a little bit early this year and over the last couple months, but it's really hard to find staff.”

“Transport's also been very hard, and we're still facing that at the moment. On the side of supplying our customers, the delays have been out of our control. When you're bringing in ingredients or packaging, in the past you had seven to 10 days lead-time. Now you’re ordering four to six weeks out and, even then, you can’t be sure that it’s all going to arrive when it’s supposed to.”

Were there any unanticipated positives that came out of your experiences across recent years?

“After the initial downturn and all the negativity, especially being in food, there was quite a lot of growth in the food industry. And, for us in particular, there was a lot of demand for our products. So we've seen the company grow in the last 12 months.”

“Being in the food industry, cleaning and hygiene is already a strong focus for us. While we didn't have to change too much, we used the learnings from COVID – and, obviously, COVID being in the news – we used that as an example to our staff to reinforce our good manufacturing practices.”

What does the future of manufacturing in Australia look like through your eyes?

“We’ve been losing a lot of manufacturing. I think the government needs to provide as much support as they can for whatever manufacturing we've got left in this country. I think it's important that we hold onto everything that we have.” 

“For us in the cheese industry, it's looking a little scary because milk production has been in a decline for many years now. On farms, the younger generation aren’t following on from their parents when they reach retirement age. No one's taking over that farm. They're just closing down and selling the cows. We haven't felt it as much ourselves because, like I said, we've had our farmers for a long time, and we have good relationships. But, just in the last couple months, we've had a few farmers go into retirement and close up. So, no one's taking over, no one's buying that farm, so that milk is lost to us and to the overall Australian figures of how much milk is produced here.”

“The decline is scary because we're going to have less milk for Australians. I think there's got to be something to entice people to get into dairy farming, but it’s not an easy job; it's challenging and it's tough. And I guess that's a concern for us moving forward if milk continues to decline, for us as a business, but also for the nation being able to produce our own dairy products and our own milk.”

If you were to share some important advice with other Australian manufacturers, what would it be?

Director, Mario Bongiorno

“Be proactive in your business. Always try to find the best efficiencies you can. We've found that sometimes you try to do things internally with the people you have, but it can also be good to bring in external experts in their fields, to bring new ideas to your business and a different set of eyes. We've been doing this the past 12 to 18 months and we've found that it's helpful, just having an open mind to other ideas.”

“There's always so much you can do; sometimes, you just need to narrow your focus and tick off each thing, and not have too many projects going on at once. Limit the projects that you want to tick off because, especially for us, we've got an older factory, an older site and there's so many things we want to do. We were just having a meeting the other day and we said, ‘It's great to brainstorm and have all these down on paper, but let's pinpoint two or three and say we're going to knuckle down on them, get them completed and then move on to the next’. So having a narrow focus, I think, is also important.”

Find out more about Alba Cheese: www.albacheese.com.au 

The Alba Cheese story is part of Integra Systems' Advance Australian Manufacturing (#AAM) initiative. Read all about it and see how you can participate.