Key Industries
Circular Head is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, allowing for a variety of businesses and industries. Key sectors include forestry and timber production, agriculture, dairy and prime beef production, commercial fishing and aquaculture, manufacturing, tourism, vegetable processing and iron ore pelletising.
Circular Head businesses export to more than 20 countries, predominantly in the Asia-Pacific region.
Circular Head is Tasmania's largest dairy area with more than thirty per cent of the State's dairy farms. The municipality also has its share of successful niche industries such as Leatherwood honey production, seaweed fertiliser manufacturing and Japanese Wagyu cattle breeding.
The following companies are some of Circular Head's key employers and/or exporters. To locate other businesses in Circular Head visit the Tasmanian site of the Yellow Pages
Australian Bulk Minerals
Australian Bulk Minerals (ABM) owns the Savage River iron ore mine on the West Coast and the Port Latta pellet plant in Circular Head. The company employs more than 400 people directly and indirectly through contractors.
Concentrated iron ore slurry is pumped under pressure from the Savage River mine through an 85km pipeline to the Port Latta pelletising plant. The slurry is then processed, resulting in the production of approximately 2.5 million tonnes of iron ore pellets and approximately 50,000 tonnes of iron ore concentrate per annum.
The pellets are shipped to markets in Australia and Asia, in particular China.
The pellet plant underwent an extensive refurbishment and modernisation process from 1998 to 2002.
Australian Bulk Minerals
Head Office
60 Wilmot Street
BURNIE TAS 7320
Telephone: (03) 6432 3377
Blue Hills Honey
Blue Hills Honey is a premium gourmet honey producer based in Circular Head. The company specialises in Leatherwood honey, along with Blackberry, Meadow and Wildflower honeys. Tasmania is the only place in the world where Leatherwood honey is produced.
Blue Hills Honey employs a cold extraction process which ensures all natural components of the honey are retained.
Blue Hills Honey won a number of Gold Medals in the Tasmanian Fine Foods Awards in 2005 and 2006 and was the first Australian honey producer to implement a stringent, industry-initiated quality assurance program in accordance with Australian and New Zealand food safety requirements.
Blue Hills Honey exports to Japan, Jordan, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Germany, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and the United States. In early 2008 the company was in negotiations with distributors in India and Dubai.
Blue Hills Honey
1858 Mawbanna Road
MAWBANNA TAS 7321
Phone: (03) 6458 8142
Web: www.bluehillshoney.com
Bolduans Bay Oysters Pty Ltd
Bolduans Bay Oysters have 79 hectares of marine farm sites at three locations in Circular Head. They employ 20 full-time and 4 casual staff. The company produce different size and quality oysters depending on customer requirements, the largest of which are exported to the Sydney and Melbourne fish markets, as well as Western Australia, the ACT and Queensland.
Bolduans Bay Oysters also sell juvenile oysters to other farmers in Tasmania for further growing.
Shellfish farmers from throughout Tasmania, including Bolduans Bay Oysters, collectively own a marketing company which sells mussels and mature oysters for Tasmanian shellfish growers.
Bolduans Bay Oysters also develops a lot of its own machinery for handling oysters. With the help of an AusIndustry grant, the company is working on a project to develop a new grading system, with the specific aim of reducing mortality rates in its oysters.
Bolduans Bay Oysters has also developed its own stock management program that has been sold to oyster growers in Tasmania, South Australia and New Zealand.
Bolduans Bay Oysters
West Esplanade
SMITHTON TAS 7330
Telephone: (03) 6452 2262
Web: www.bboyster.com.au
Britton Bros Pty Ltd
Britton Bros, trading as Britton Timbers, is based in Smithton. It is Tasmania's largest privately-owned hardwood sawmill and the biggest producer of specialty timbers. The company employs approximately 70 staff at its Smithton mill, with a further 28 staff employed in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
The Smithton complex includes a sawmill, kiln drying facility, docking and machining plants and a veneer slicing and drying plant. Blackwood timber accounts for about 32% of the company's production and Tasmanian oak approximately 62%, with the balance of production coming from sassafras, leatherwood, celery-top pine and myrtle species.
The company also produces moulded timbers including architraves, linings and floorings and timber veneers. Customers include the building trade, manufacturers of fine furniture, architects and crafts people.
Britton Timbers sells locally and on the mainland through its branches in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. It also exports timber to China, Singapore, New Zealand and the USA.
Exports for the 2005/06 financial year accounted for almost 10% of timber sales.
Britton Timbers Tasmania
3 Brittons Road
SMITHTON TAS 7330
Telephone: (03) 6452 2522
Web: www.brittontimbers.com.au
Greenham Tasmania Pty Ltd
Greenham Tasmania Pty Ltd is a meat processing facility located in Smithton, employing more than 120 staff. The company provides beef to the domestic market as well as to Japan, Korea and the United States.
Greenham Tasmania Pty Ltd processes more than 10,000 tonnes of grass-fed beef annually with supplies coming directly from more than 3,000 properties across Tasmania and King Island.
The company works with customers to ensure that the meat is trimmed, packed and labelled to specification. The processing site has freezing facilities so the meat can be either chilled or frozen for air or sea transport to customers almost anywhere in the world.
Greenham Tasmania Pty Ltd
Bacon Factory Road
SMITHTON TAS 7330
Telephone: (03) 6452 2701
Web: www.greenham.com.au
Gunns Limited (Ltd)
Gunns Ltd is Australia's largest fully integrated hardwood forest products company. Its Smithton Mill employs 90 people and, from a production perspective, is the largest of five hardwood green mills the company operates in Tasmania.
Gunns' Smithton Mill sources all its resource from the Circular Head district, utilising 100% of the log. Once the timber has been extracted from the log, any residue is chipped for paper and pulp production.
The sawdust and shavings from both the green and dry mills is utilised as boiler fuel which in turn kiln dries the timber and assists glue-curing in the lamination plants. Gunns' glue-laminating plants produce both structural and appearance/joinery components for domestic and international markets.
The Smithton Mill exports domestically and to more than 20 countries.
Worldwide, the company employs more than 1,600 people.
Gunns Limited
PO Box 222
SMITHTON TAS 7330
Telephone: (03) 6452 1331
Web: www.gunns.com.au
McCain Foods (Australia) Pty Ltd
McCain Foods, a large multi-national company, has a vegetable processing and multi-purpose freezing plant located in Smithton. In peak season the company employs more than 300 people.
The plant is supplied with fresh vegetables from growers in Circular Head and surrounding regions. Much of the
produce is frozen and includes carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, peas and beans. The Smithton plant also produces French fries.
McCain Foods is a large multi-national company with more than 55 production facilities on six continents. Worldwide, the company employs some 20,000 staff and processes almost one-third of the world's French fries.
McCain Foods (Australia) Pty Ltd
Smith Street
SMITHTON TAS 7330
Telephone: (03) 6452 1321
Web: www.mccain.com
Murray Goulburn (MG) Classic Foods Pty Ltd
MG Classic Foods, a UHT dairy product packaging plant, is located at Edith Creek. The company packs 190 labels for 40 national and international customers, exporting to seven countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
MG Classic Foods purchases between 150,000 and 200,000 litres of milk (eight-plus tanker loads) per day from dairy farmers in Circular Head and surrounding municipalities.
The plant operates 5 days per week and employs more than 150 staff.
MG Classic Foods Pty Ltd
RA 1220 Trowutta Road
EDITH CREEK TAS 7330
Telephone: (03) 6452 0000
Web: www.classicfoods.com.au
Ta Ann Tasmania Pty Ltd
Ta Ann Tasmania Pty Ltd operates two Rotary Peel Veneer mills in Tasmania, one in the Huon district and the other in Smithton.
Timber is processed into veneer for use in plywood flooring, construction ply, container flooring and specialty products such as Laminated Veneer Lumber. Specialty floor ply made from 70% and 100% Tasmanian eucalypt has been developed. Both mills use sustainable regrowth timber and plantation resource that would otherwise be made into lower-value woodchips or exported as peeler logs.
The Smithton mill employs 50 full-time staff and 10 casual staff, along with contractors, and there is capacity in the Smithton mill to install a third log cutting line and a second dryer in future years.
The company exports the veneer to Asian markets, in particular Japan.
Ta Ann Tasmania Pty. Ltd.
GPO Box 615
HOBART TAS 7001
Telephone: (03) 6231 3280
Mill Address:
1 Marthicks Road
SMITHTON TAS 7330
Telephone: (03) 6452 1399
Tasmanian Seafoods Pty Ltd
Tasmanian Seafoods Pty Ltd is Australia's largest exporter of abalone. The company employs approximately 50 staff in Circular Head and a further 50 across Tasmania.
Tasmanian Seafoods Pty Ltd also has a factory in Victoria and an office in Darwin in the Northern Territory, from where it operates 13 boats.
Products include canned, fresh and dried abalone and sea cucumber along with prawns, whiting and scallops.
International markets include Great Britain, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan and the United States.
Tasmanian Seafoods Pty Ltd
The Esplanade
SMITHTON TAS 7330
Telephone: (03) 6452 1275
Web: www.tasmanianseafoods.com.au
