Case Studies
Issue No. 50 - December/ /
Entrepreneurial Mission
by Pamela Brombal
Mission Australia has a 150-year history of helping Australians in need; its record of creating fast-growing businesses from nothing is more recent.
Mission Australia’s employment service most often works to bring employers - 40,000 last year – together with job seekers – 200,000.
But there’s also the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, funded by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, which helps potential business owners get a start.
Unemployed people apply for the program, which tests the viability of a business concept or idea.
A NEIS success story is Adelaide-based milk product distributor, Wise Choice Healthy Foods.
In 2004 Alan Steinert anxd his business partner, John Maidment identified a potential market for high quality milk in Adelaide’s southern suburbs. Potential became reality when dairy farmers in Myponga set up a plant to bottle fresh milk as The Fleurieu Milk Company. Alan struck a distribution deal for the Southern Adelaide metro areas.
Wise Choice now employs 18 people, runs six refrigerated delivery vans and supplies more than
400 businesses including 120 supermarkets and 80 coffee shops.
In the first year Wise Choice turned over $400,000. Second-year turnover was $1.7 million; third year $2.1 million. This year Alan expects turnover to top $3 million.
“NEIS training, assistance and on-going mentoring has been a cornerstone of this business,” says Alan. “In pa...
