Mypolonga entrepreneur Kelly Johnson has been recognised with two significant awards this month.
The founder of Woodlane Orchard has won both a 2024 Shine Award by The Weekly Times in partnership with Harvey Norman and a Premier’s Food and Beverage Industry Award in the Sustainability and Waste Management category for her new brand SPhiker.
She tells ARN’s Adam and Jennie that she works to reduce their carbon footprint and has sustainability at its core.
“What we try to do is collect surplus produce from around the region, the things that are ugly and people don’t want to buy. We pay the farmer direct and then we dry them and imagine them into shelf-stable soups, meals and snacks, so even the leftover scraps that we have we send them back to feed animals so we pretty much end up with nothing in the end,” Kelly said to ARN’s Adam and Jennie this week.
Kelly started Woodlane Orchard in 2019 after she noticed local farmers were throwing out a significant amount of fruit they were unable to sell. She dried the fruit and sold it at farmers’ markets before expanding into shops and other venues.
“And then in the last 12 months we launched SPhiker, which is a light-weight brand, totally sustainable, so even the packaging if you drop that it would rot away. That was very exciting and that’s how we won the Food Awards for Sustainability because we have a completely circular-economy product there,” Kelly said.
