Clockwise from top left: Jim’s Jerky products, dried dog treats, racking beef jerky, Biltong in bowl, and Jim’s Jerky founders Jim and Cathie Tanner.

TWO innovative Queensland agricultural and food businesses have announced they are forming a partnership to manufacture dehydrated meat products for the burgeoning pet and human snack markets.

Sunpork and Mighty Good Food Group have joined forces to meet the growing demand for pet treats and protein snacks worldwide.

Australia’s largest pork producer, SunPork, and the Mighty Good Food Group – home of prominent family business Jim’s Jerky – are jointly investing in Temba Meats to create best in class manufacturing capability in the Toowoomba region.

The manufacturing partnership will harness the shared commitment to customer service, operational excellence, innovation and talent development that defines the ethos of both businesses.

Mighty Good Food Group’s data-driven drying process and technologies, coupled with SunPork’s deep expertise in production efficiency, allows the manufacturing partnership under Temba Meats to service both current and emerging markets and customers with a specialised and state of the art drying capability at scale.

The partnership evolved as both companies looked for ways to grow their operations with a joint need for capacity and drying technologies that produced the highest quality products, for both the lucrative pet market and the rapidly growing functional snack markets.

Rob van Barneveld

In making the announcement at a recent Rural Press Club presentation, SunPork CEO and Managing Director, Dr Robert van Barneveld, said “SunPork have access to nearly a quarter of the pigs’ ears, snouts, tracheas, pizzles and lungs for dog treats in Australia, but have never found a suitable solution for conversion of these into high value dog treats.

“We needed a partner and involvement in a manufacturing facility to help us in that evolution and we found that with the Mighty Good Food Group”.

“In our search for manufacturing options, we were unable to match the product quality achieved using Jim’s processing expertise, and as SunPork is a wholly Australian family-owned company we were very well aligned with the values of the Mighty Good Food Group, making this a natural partnership” Dr van Barneveld said.

Emily Pullen

Mighty Good Food Group CEO, Emily Pullen, highlighted that SunPork’s needs were complementary to the strategic evolution of the Jim’s Jerky business and that the team were excited to partner with Sunpork to provide a unique and unparalleled product and service offering to our customers.

“Working with a new protein to service a new market is an exciting challenge the team is eager to take on, with a great local partner. And we are thrilled to explore the significant new innovation and NPD opportunities this will allow us to bring to our customers. ”

The two groups are in the final stages of completing legal agreements with new products from the Temba Meats partnership expected to hit the markets in the latter half of 2024.

The SunPork Group, with more than 52,000 sows and $0.6 billion in revenue, is the largest fully integrated pork production company in Australasia. SunPork has 48 farms, two abattoirs, a valueadd plant and four feed mills in Australia with another seven farms in New Zealand.

Employing more than 1,500 people in regional communities, SunPork produces more than 20% of Australia’s pork from 1.2 million pigs per annum totalling more than 90 million kilograms. The business spans genetics, feed milling, farming, processing, value-adding, sales and marketing and distribution.

About Mighty Good Food Group

Mighty Good Food Group (MGFG) brings together a long heritage of technology-driven craftsmanship in the creation of premium beef jerky, with a modern, health-oriented approach to world class food manufacturing.

Using the best food science and technology available, MGFG is building a portfolio of nutritious, delicious, snack brands using premium Australian beef and other carefully selected proteins.

From the iconic legacy created by Jim Tanner twenty years ago in Toowoomba, regional Queensland, MGFG has been developed to proudly bring Australia’s best dried meat snacks to the world.