WHEN it comes to climate, Tasmania hits the right spot for jam maker Holger Ostersen.
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The Scottsdale business owner once dairy farmed in the deep cold of his former country, Denmark.
He swapped it for the heat of Tanzania and later Townsville, Australia, where he worked through day-in day-out 35 degree temperatures before heading south to Tasmania in 2006.
“I’d had enough of the tropics.”
In the green paddocks outside Scottsdale last Tuesday a cool breeze picked up in a long stretch of rhubarb crop.
Razz Rhubarb farm, where Mr Ostersen sources seconds of the produce, was busy packing stalks of the vegetable.
Owner Jerrod Nichols said the crop didn’t cope with successive hot days, a rarity in the state.
Rhubarb, a herbaceous plant originating in the cold reaches of Siberia, northern China and Mongolia, thrives in Tasmania.
The state’s climate gives Mr Nichols a larger production window than his mainland counterparts.
But its conditions bring their own challenges.
“The winter’s just such a fickle thing with the weather,” he said.
More sunshine is needed in the next few weeks if the crop is to grow the right size for harvest.
Packers bunch it in a shed, shielded from the wind, checking stalks meet requirements for colour, length and shape.
Mr Ostersen picks up a shorter variety with a small mark on the side, not suitable for the supermarket vegetable stalls but fine for cooking and making products with.
Once cooked, the seconds go into RhuBru products which are packed in Scottsdale before filling shelves in Tasmania and interstate.
“Rhubarb is a funny one,” Mr Ostersen says.
“It’s a quirky product. It’s not like selling apples and oranges.
“But then there is no-one else really making it.”
His business began with an idea to make rhubarb champagne.
The plan transformed with some trial and error.
After guests tried rhubarb juice at his bed and breakfast, Mr Ostersen was convinced to start bottling it.
He started selling it in 2008 and now has 16 products.
RhuBru has worked with Bridestowe Lavender Farm to make lavender-infused rhubarb products including jams and jellies sold under both labels.
Building his business has been hard.
“It’s certainly been a battle to get to financially-viable turnover.”
The quirkiness of the product is both a challenge and an opportunity.
Among older shoppers there’s fondness for the vegetable and memories of warm crumbles in winter, mixed with deep-set aversions resulting from force feeding.
“A lot of young people look to try something new they’ve never experienced before.
“It is not the normal product.
“Everybody knows what a raspberry jam is or a strawberry jam or strawberry drink is.”
Less so with rhubarb syrup, cordial and jelly.
Mr Ostersen’s move into jams was natural after his previous venture making jam and marmalade for export from Tanzania to Denmark.
RhuBru is engaging in the value-adding needed to make Tasmania more competitive, director of the University of Tasmania’s Centre for Food Innovation Roger Stanley said.
Value-capture locally is up to four times greater if products are modified in Tasmania than if they were exported unaltered, he said.
Part of that value-capture is employment.
However most Tasmanian produce is not value-added.
“Tasmania has to value-add as much as possible in order to be able to compete in markets outside of Tasmania,” Professor Stanley said.
It is a way of overcoming the state’s problem of distance to market.
Businesses like RhuBru were tapping into existing skills, Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO Michael Bailey said.
“We’ve still got that underlying skill set and expertise we need to unleash with these sorts of ideas.”
At Razz Rhubarb, a ute pulls in by the shed with a tray of red stalks.
Wind badly hit the farm in the last couple of weeks.
Three quarters of Mr Nichols rhubarb goes to Woolworths in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. At one time he supplied 800 of the chain’s stores nationwide.
Mr Nichols supplies markets in Melbourne, Sydney, Western Australia and South Australia through agents.
At peak his farm produces 20 tonnes of rhubarb a week.
RhuBru’s emergence has complemented his farm well, Mr Nichols said.
“The more products that are out there, the more demand it creates.”
The RhuBru label has made it to shelves in mainland supermarkets Woolworths, Coles and Aldi. Its compote is available to guests at Pumphouse Point.
Mr Ostersen is already developing a new product line of relishes, chutney, jam and sauce under a separate label The Old Factory, only using Australian produce.
He expects it’ll take up to two years to build momentum.