This article is sponsored by Hyundai Australia.  »

In August, Hyundai Australia announced it would be giving its 2020 advertising budget to three small businesses who needed it more. Artisan cheesemaker Coolamon Cheese Co is the first company to receive the generous offer.

Hailing from the NSW town of Coolamon, this year has thrown a number of difficult obstacles at the small business, forcing them to close their main public-facing venue. “After clearing many hurdles since opening the business, 2020 will be remembered as the year revenues dropped through the floor,” general manager Keiran Spencer told Business Insider Australia.

“Our cheesemaking, cheese tasting and cheese tour revenues were lost. Many of our wholesale customers also running cafes/restaurants were gone – and of course, even revenues from farmer’s markets and food festivals were gone.”

While the business wasn’t directly subjected to 2020’s Black Summer bushfires, it did see a huge reduction in the number of travellers passing through the region, affecting sales. On top of that, successive seasons of drought reduced cafe and restaurant trade from a local perspective.

“Then came the pandemic and we have struggled on thinking it might be the death-knell for us,” Spencer said. “COVID-19 has had an undeniable impact on our business as it has with other businesses, including the businesses that buy from us. It is by far the biggest impact on trade in all departments. Retail and wholesale sales were down by up to 92% during COVID restrictions. Many of our wholesale customers had to close their doors during those restrictions. This had a flow-on effect to our wholesale revenue.”

“Making the decision to outsource our café/restaurant and having to let go of our 15 staff members, many of whom were locals, was not an easy decision. A number of them had been with us for a number of years since opening — it was gut-wrenching.”

Coolamon Cheese Co was established in 2015 with qualified microbiologist Barry Lillywhite, the business’s founding cheesemaker and Coolamon resident. With decades of cheesemaking experience under his belt, Barry was keen to start an artisan cheese business of his own. Thanks to the help of Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory founder Neil Druce, the pair devised an agritourism venture that included the making of artisan cheese, cheese factory tours, cheesemaking classes, a retail outlet and a café/restaurant all within the same facility.

With a grant from the Murray Darling Basin Regional Economical Diversification Program and help from the Coolamon Shire Council, they were able to bring their dream to life in a heritage building on the main street of the NSW town.

“The local community got strongly behind Barry & Neil, not only in offering practical help during the construction of the cheesemaking facility and the re-fit of the interior of the building for the café/restaurant, but also by the fact that a core of the local community agreed to become investors in the business,” Spencer said.

“Barry is now happily retired but not before handing over the reins to Jennifer Nestor — an experienced artisan cheesemaker from Victoria who was delighted to move to the Riverina and step into Barry’s large, ‘food complying’ gumboots. Jennifer has since gone above and beyond expectations in challenging cheese frontiers.”

Winning Hyundai’s Take A Load Off competition — a $52,000 bespoke advertising package taken from Hyundai’s own advertising budget — has given Coolamon Cheese access to services they “could only dream of before”. Not only that, it’s given the business a chance to bring its lactose-free range to the market, a secret weapon that truly separates Coolamon apart from the competition.

“We identified a niche market that wasn’t being serviced in Australia,” Spencer said. “The lactose-free milk market has seen significant growth over the past five to six years, though this has not translated into dairy cheese products that are lactose-free, and definitely not hand-crafted cheese.”

“Research showed us that investment was needed because of the significant rise in lactose sensitivity and intolerance in the community. We knew if we could make this cheese then the product would be the only artisan/lactose-free/dairy-based cheese in Australia — with few examples in the rest of the world either.”

After complex experimentation and taste trials, they pulled off a result so similar to the real thing, Coolamon was awarded a bronze medal at the World Cheese Awards in Bergamo Italy in 2019 for its lactose-free brie. What makes that feat even more impressive is that the judges had no idea they were tasting lactose-free cheese.

“We decided to submit our lactose-free Brie in the traditional Brie category,” Spencer said. “In other words, without letting on that the cheese was actually a lactose-free variant of our Brie. So you can imagine how elated we were to be awarded a bronze medal in an international Cheese Award — a competition category open to French, Italian and other cheesemakers from other countries who are famous for their artisan cheeses.”

Launching this product into the marketplace by the end of the year is Coolamon Cheese’s biggest goal but admits the business will be forced to do more with fewer resources for a little while. “We have in our sights a goal to significantly increase our brand-awareness too, as well as our reputation as a premium artisan cheesemaker,” Spencer said.

“We feel that the Take A Load Off competition will be the launchpad to a greater goal — that of making ourselves the number one hand-crafted, dairy-based, lactose-free cheese brand in Australia. Of course, part of that will be to expand our ranges in all products, including the Coolamon Cheese Co lactose-free range.”

“Instead of seeing our business on the slippery slide, we can now look forward to staying in business and achieving all of that. So we say a tremendous thank you Hyundai.”

Coolamon Cheese Co make a range of artisan cheeses by hand, from the lactose-free double brie to soft and hard blue cheese and a unique collection of native ingredient cheeses. You can support the company and see its full range of products right here.

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