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Maggie Beer’s Recovery
On August 16 last year, fresh from a meeting with the governor general in Canberra, Maggie Beer fell from the top of a steep, narrow staircase at her Barossa Valley home.
One of the nation’s most loved food icons spent five weeks in the Royal Adelaide Hospital, including time in intensive care, and underwent three surgeries to repair multiple broken bones and other serious injuries.
A fortnight after the accident, the listed gourmet food company that bears her name, Maggie Beer Holdings, capped a tumultuous financial year - one marked by the departures of both its chief executive and chief financial officer - by plunging to a $28.2 million annual loss.
“I was out of the ballpark with my accident. It really was a very significant time,” she now reflects. “Every time there was an article, even when it was a mixture of positive and negative, always there was a byline that was negative attached to my name. That is really difficult, there is no two ways about it. I wish it weren’t so, but it is never going to be different, I can see that.”
Yet even in the darkest moments, her conviction in the strength of the Maggie Beer brand, and the people who carry it, never wavered.
“I am so incredibly proud of the culture of making Maggie Beer products. I can’t tell you the feeling of ease that it gives me knowing that that ethos, the philosophy behind everything we do, is embedded in such a way that whether I’m there or not there,” she says proudly.
“It has remained about excellence, people, pride and loyalty. It is the best, best feeling that I have such trust. This belief and loyalty and excellence that I know is within Maggie Beer Products has been my saving grace.”
Turnaround and Strategic Direction
Fifteen months on, Maggie has made a full recovery and the company’s fortunes are tracking in the same direction. The share price is up 120 per cent over the past year.
One third of the share register is now held by two South Australian food veterans: Angelo Kotses, the Greek immigrant who breathed new life into Bickford’s and took it global, and Maurice Crotti, whose family built the San Remo pasta empire, spanning Australia and Italy. Chris Illman, Bickford’s head of sales, and Bickford’s general counsel Rebecca Tolhurst, were recently elected to the MBH board.
New chairman Mark Lindh, a former corporate adviser-turned company director, has already begun reshaping a cost base that had been too high for too long.
““He feels very strongly about taking costs out of the business, and then getting it to a point now where we can really analyse where to go forward. But he is this calm, considered strategic chair. So, I so look forward to our first board meeting with our new board members and us deciding when we are going to have a real hands-on strategy day to get together to formulate our path,” Maggie says.
Most importantly, she believes the company has finally returned to its roots after what she calls “the most difficult time”.
Commitment to Quality
Next year MBH marks a decade on the ASX, and Maggie still owns 2.6 per cent of the business.
“I know we can never allow to be repeated where decisions about the brand are made in Sydney,” she declares.
Her connections to Cotses and Crotti run deep. Many years ago she met both through Food South Australia, the state's peak body for the food and beverage industry. With Crotti she also shares a love of opera and neighbouring beach houses on the South Australian coastline.
“The culture of the business is still there. Now, for me, the exciting thing is looking to the future. Because there is a real future to be had, particularly with the knowledge and the growth that comes from these very experienced FMCG people,” she says.
“It is a really critical thing that we need. Then, of course, I’m still full of ideas and I want to be able to present them to a board that is enthusiastic and sees that there is a wider vision to be had.”
She acknowledges the ever-present challenge for MBH, especially as a listed company: how to grow commercially while protecting the artisanal, paddock-to-plate essence the brand is famous for.
Maggie sees herself as the conscience of the business, the voice insisting that shortcuts, preservatives and dilution of quality never creep in.
For 40 years she has upheld the same rules: natural preservatives only, total cold-chain control, and a purist’s loyalty to Australian ingredients. Those fundamentals, she says, must remain untouched.
Innovation, not compromise, is how she squares the circle. It is all about maximising production capacity for efficiency. Even the most obscure components, like the peat pepper used in pâtés, are sourced with meticulous care and grown specifically for the company in Queensland.
Future Growth and Expansion
Better distribution, she argues, drives better economics: fuller kitchens, longer production runs and improved efficiency, all without eroding standards. She is also adamant that the new investors like Kotses and Crotty are aligned in that belief.
“People like Angelo and Maurice, they are in it because they believe in it. Who would want to denigrate that by taking shortcuts? But it behoves us to confront those other issues. Full production is what is cost effective. Of course, we can only have full production when we have better distribution,” she says.
In five years time she hopes MBH will have grown substantially with a much wider distribution within the Australian market, whilst keeping the philosophy behind the brand intact.
“I also want us to take advantage of other exciting possibilities that I’m certainly not going to name. But there are certain things that I can’t wait to get everyone together on, because they’re just sitting there waiting for belief that something extra can happen that would really make a difference to the business,” she says.
The only hint she will offer is a move into some overseas markets.
“There are one or two products that are ripe for export - not all of our products are - but there are those that are. The ones that are sleepers. It is an opportunity for the future, but I feel we need to be very directed, not adopting a scatter gun, passive approach.”
She will miss the wise counsel of her good friend Hugh Robertson, who stepped down from the MBH board at the AGM after a decade of service.
“I am going to miss Hugh not just for his sardonic humour, which I love, but for his insight about the world,” she says. “(Her husband) Colin and I would not have sold if we had not trusted him.”
On January 19 this year, Maggie celebrated her 80th birthday.
“Next year, 2026, is 30 years from the formation of Maggie Beer Products and what was the building of the Export Kitchen in Tanunda, even though the pate had actually begun with me making it in the Pheasant Farm Restaurant kitchens in between meal services, with the first ‘wholesale’ order happening in 1981,” she says. “Never with a short cut taken in scaling up from the kitchen bench to commercial production.”
She remains deeply involved in MBH product development and still regards all the company’s staff as family.
“I have all the energy in the world and for me, it’s about being the protector of the brand,” she says. “That will always be there in some way or another. To my last breath. I’m still going to feel it’s mine.”
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