same business: adding value to forage, delivering reliability to producers, and building trust over time. “Generations of our family—and our customers’ families—have grown up together,” says Managing Director Mark Johnson, fourth generation at the helm. “We’re still supplying some of the same customer lines we opened in the 1960s. Now our kids are working with their kids. That continuity is our DNA.” A CENTURY OF PIVOTS— WITHOUT LOSING THE PLOT The Johnson story is a case study in agile manufacturing before agility was a buzzword. In the 1930s and ’40s, as tractors replaced horses, the family became a Caltex distributor, hauling heating oil and lubricants to farms they once supplied with feed. In the 1950s–60s, exports took off—oat milling and rolled/flaked oats for human consumption and equine markets found steady demand in Singapore and Peru. Then came a defining pivot. In the 1970s–80s, Johnson Group moved from chaff to pelletizing, building a feed mill to supply the live export sheep trade. When that market softened in South Australia, the business faced excess capacity—and a moment of truth. Mark’s father stepped in, took advice from Austrade, and went country-to-country looking for new demand. He found it in Japan—but not for pellets. The team built a hay press, opened fresh channels, and never looked back. “We didn’t sell a pellet on that trip,” Johnson laughs. “But we sold a strategy.” That flexibility catalyzed decades of growth, including a 30-year joint venture with a Japanese partner—a rare and durable crossborder alliance in the agri-feed space. SCALE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE POWER OF CONSOLIDATION Through the 1990s, Johnson Group operated multiple factories across SA, Victoria, and NSW. A global scan of best practice—particularly in North America— convinced leadership to consolidate. By replacing five or six older machines with two advanced lines at two strategic sites, the company nearly quadrupled output while simplifying its footprint. Johnson notes that today’s the platform includes the Kapunda, SA – head office; pellet mill (major upgrade in 2016) and hay facility, the Horsham,VIC– greenfield factory completed in stages (~$35 million recent investment), Highbury, WA – new site brought online in 2022–23 to stabilise western supply and Ningbo, China – JV pellet mill supporting growth and market intimacy in East Asia 83 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA VOLUME 07, ISSUE 11 J.T. JOHNSON AND SONS
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