South Australia's seven year drought meant little more than shorter showers and watering the garden at night for most of the state. But for fruit growers and packers like Impi Citrus, it must have seemed like the end of the world.
The Murray River stopped flowing, gathering in tepid pools, and all the while slim water allowances were getting slimmer. The Cant family, owners and operators of Impi since 1969, decided that rather than dwindle and die, it was time for drastic action.
Ben Cant, son of owners Bronwyn and Jim, is a driving force in much of the overhaul that was to come.
"It was a family decision we made, but yeah, it was a punt. I think every day in horticulture is a punt really. We used the drought as an opportunity to reduce plantings," Ben says.
This meant pulling out almost half of their 25,000-tree fruit orchard in 2005. Their older trees were using more water and producing less fruit as the Australian dollar skyrocketed to record exchange rates, killing exports for the Riverland growers.
2006 marked a new beginning for the business, but one filled with risk. They sold off some of their land to fund a major replanting of young trees, which use less water than old ones. The trade off is that the young trees are still years away from producing.
"You take your best educated guess," says Ben, "you say it might take five to seven years for the trees to reach maturity, and we think droughts usually go for five to seven years."
The replanting allowed for the Cants to diversify their offering. Previously focused on low-value Valencia oranges, which mature early and mostly end up in juice, Impi planted late-maturing Navel oranges. It matched up with high demand they'd see toward the end of the season.
"We've tried to spread our risk a little bit. As a grower we have a fairly balanced portfolio. We have Navel oranges that go for export, Valencia for juice. Then there's mandarins and grapefruit for the domestic market," Ben explains.
"We cross supply to all of those markets, but the bulk of the supply of those commodities is targeted to particular markets."
Those targeted markets are very important, because, as Ben says, "citrus is principally export driven." Most of their premium, value-added products take off to Asia and beyond, and Australia produces much more citrus than they consume – just like the wine industry.
For growers, this can be a boon – or a disaster if they're unprepared for the issues outside of their control that come with it.
"What can happen is, farmers get dragged in to an agri-political issue. We even get worried about the Japanese whaling thing, because Japan is Australia's largest market for citrus.
"We do a little bit of export, but only enough to keep a toe in the door. It just means that, from a business perspective, should things turn south with Japan or wherever, we're supplying several different markets and our business doesn't come to a standstill."
Their domestic operations have been the focus of a huge infrastructure rethink and investment. The Cants have put millions of dollars in to a new packhouse and new technology to go with it.
"Our old packhouse was the original on the property. There were all sorts of issues, like getting staff there because it's half an hour out of the nearest town. It's on the end of the power network so it can be very unreliable power in poor weather.
"Although most of the fruit was from our own farm, we started packing for another grower and that meant bringing fruit on to the property that could compromise the biosecurity of our own orchard."
"We even get worried about the Japanese whaling thing, because Japan is Australia's largest market for citrus."
For Impi, it's much cleaner and safer to do everything off-site. It also means they have ample storage space and they're now right next to the freight network, meaning they have three shipping companies within a stone's throw.
Ben has led the charge on retooling the packhouse to be a state of the art, largely automated facility.
The first of their gadgets is a million dollar citrus-sorter, a rig of cameras that takes 21 photos of each fruit, constructing a 3D model of the blemishes and colour variations that make up its grade. It can do this for 40 fruit a second.
"It reduces the number of people visually sorting the fruit. Although the internal quality is all the same, citrus is graded on appearance. The machine we have now, it's industry standard – but it's the best in the industry."
"We probably have about $2.5 million worth of processing and packaging equipment in our packhouse. All in the effort to do things as efficiently as possible, to automate as much as we can."
There's one last and very significant area where Impi pushed ahead of the pack. In a prescient move, Impi anticipated the now-realised supremacy of Coles and Woolworths in the domestic market.
"We saw this cultural shift and the rise of the duopoly occurring in the Australian retail market. There was a bit of fear in the industry, a lot of packers and shippers were hesitant about working with them and wanted to maintain the ways of the past, the tried and true ways," Ben explains.
"We figured, well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. You might as well be at the front of the queue."
Their domestic supply chain was turned on its head. Previously Impi had worked with 10 or more agents around the country, around two in each capital city. While it wasn't bad business when supply was more distributed, it quickly became inefficient in the duopoly market created by the big chains.
"We decided to partner with one agent who is effectively a category manager for the chain stores. When we can't supply fruit, they'll source it from other packers as well. We're kind of like a primary supplier to them.
"What we're able to do is negotiate a better brokerage rate, or sales rate commission in to the supermarket, because we're using one company for all of the transactions instead of six."
For Impi, it results in a much more direct relationship with the retailer, which completely changes their method of picking, processing and shipping.
In the past, selling through agents meant overnight or two-night shipping to most capital cities. Rather than it sitting in the market for another day or two waiting for buyers to commit, it ships directly to Woolworths or Coles, resulting in a fresher product that looks better and can be on shelves for longer.
"There's no stretch or slack in the supply chain. It's much tighter," Ben says.
"We figured, well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. You might as well be at the front of the queue."
Wholesalers can't store and speculate on Impi fruit anymore, which is good for their rate. But it also means there's a lot more work for Impi, as they now customise their picking and harvest program based on weekly orders direct from the retailers.
"You're running on a knife edge," Ben says, "Every week when you get the program, bang, you've got to get the harvest sorted within a day or two and start the picking program."
In some ways this results in big risks – if Impi loses a day or more of picking to rain they can be in trouble – but it also means they're only picking and packing products to order. No more sustaining a loss on fruit that doesn't get sold.
"That makes a big difference," Ben emphasises.
The process of innovating and changing hasn't stopped for Impi. Out of the drought and the bad times, they could easily settle in to their current routine, lie back on their investments and coast. But the Cants aren't like that. Impi Citrus is looking forward.
Ben explains that they're more than happy nurturing their domestic customers in what seems to be a saturated market. Now they're turning their eyes East.
"China is huge, we've barely even scratched the surface. Japan is our largest export market now. And there's the free-trade agreement with Korea that's just about to be signed off by both parliaments."
Korea is the United States' largest market for citrus. Being counter-seasonal to Australia, Ben and Impi see that as a void that can be filled. In 10 years’ time the tariff will reduce to zero, and the market will be open suddenly.
"It really is a case of how many trees we can get in the ground."