Southern Alp Sprouts

Karen and Jason McGrath started growing snow pea and alfalfa sprouts in their garage 26 years ago. From that small venture they have developed an enterprise in a purpose-built facility supplying 12 sprout lines and mixes to supermarkets and food distributors. Over the years they have used careful financial management, mechanisation and developed their own IP to build a sustainable health food business, the largest of its type in the South Island.

In 1998 Karen McGrath was keen to start a cottage industry involving the growth of sprouts for local sale. With her background in agricultural science and seeds and her husband Jason’s engineering experience the venture started in Springfield, Canterbury. “Initially it was such trial and error,” says Karen. “There was nobody to advise us because it's a very specialised business and we didn't have Google back then. We were lucky to have a mentor with a sprout grower friend in Australia, so we met him, and he showed us his growing system. His advice was to ‘go home and shut down’ our fledgling business!”

“We didn’t, and that experience gave us some ideas – for example, we improved the growth rate of pea sprouts and we’ve got it down to 7 days now – the faster they grow, the more tender they are and the more powerful they are too with all their vitamins and minerals.”

As the business grew, their distance from where their staff lived, and their market distribution centre, became a problem. In 2007 they moved to Yaldhurst, where they designed and built their current production facility - and secured a large supermarket supply contract. In the interim they had learned a great deal about the best growth conditions for each of the seeds and were able to incorporate this into their hydroponic system. This has given them distinct production advantages.

“This is where our business is different because it is an indoor, climate controlled growing facility. We have done a lot of research and experimenting with temperatures, positive air and the regularity of watering. Each product has different optimum growing conditions – mung beans can be quite fickle; we grow alfalfa, broccoli and radish in a separate room in an imported Rota-tech machine that moves the seeds slowly through controlled air and water,” says Karen.

In the early days they did all the growing, monitoring and packaging themselves. Today they have a full team, including a factory manager.

The company’s day starts at 6am when the sprouts are harvested, the broccoli, radish and alfalfa are washed in a spa, spun dry and then packed by staff into punnets that are then labelled. The mung beans go onto a large shaker that removes the husks, then by conveyor to a multi-head machine that can produce packs of different weights. All packs are chilled rapidly to preserve nutrition and taste quality. Once down to storage temperature, they are transported to distribution centres in Christchurch.

The company aims to do as much as possible to address sustainably. Tonnes of green waste from the production process is fed to their livestock, all wastewater from production is filtered and irrigated onto paddocks, 6.5km of solar pipe on the roof heats the floors and all packaging is recyclable and bought locally wherever possible.

Karen puts their success down to three approaches to their business: a do-it-ourselves attitude to experimentation and optimisation of growing processes and systems; not expanding or buying machinery until they could afford it; and a firm belief in the nutritional and health properties of their products.

Says Karen: “We've grown into this business and now it’s big enough that we can grow even more, so that's fantastic. I'm so proud of the fact that we’ve done all this ourselves, and we brought up four girls, and after 26 years we continue to grow products that keep people healthy because they are so full of vitamins and minerals, protein and fibre.”