From custards and baby foods to soups and ready meals, SAFCOL’s Elizabeth manufacturing site produces millions of cans and pouches each year. Behind every product is a technically led team with a clear priority: ensuring the food leaving the factory is safe.
Leading that work are General Manager Operations Kieran Donoghue, Technical Manager Mae Wong and Quality Manager Scott Woollett, three food science professionals whose combined experience spans dairy manufacturing, brewing, microbiology, product development, thermal processing, quality and operations.
While many South Australians know SAFCOL for seafood, its Elizabeth factory is a diverse food manufacturing operation producing canned and pouched foods for its own brands, major Australian brands and supermarket private labels. Its own South Australian Gourmet Food Company range has grown from four soups to a broad range encompassing soups, gravies, ready meals and other products.
The site is also accredited with Dairysafe for its thermally processed dairy foods including custards and dairy-based baby foods.
For Kieran, the SAFCOL story is also his own career story. After graduating with a degree in Nutrition and Food Science from the University of South Australia, he began on the SAFCOL factory floor as a Quality Control Officer.
He progressed to Technical Manager before spending three years in the United Kingdom working for Kerry Foods. On returning to Adelaide, he rejoined SAFCOL as Operations Manager and is now General Manager Operations, with close to a decade at the company in total.
Mae’s pathway to SAFCOL began with a Food Science and Technology degree at the University of Adelaide, followed by more than eight years with a local food manufacturer in research and development and quality roles. She later moved into thermal processing, validation, training, quality systems and product development before joining SAFCOL around four years ago.
For Scott, food science led first to beer. After studying Nutrition and Food Science alongside Kieran at university, he began his career as a Technical Officer Microbiologist at West End Brewery. He went on to become a Production Leader and later Lion’s national microbiology specialist, before roles with Coopers and Big Shed Brewing eventually led him to SAFCOL as Quality Manager.
Food safety from raw materials to finished product
At SAFCOL, food safety controls begin the moment ingredients enter the site and continue until finished products are cleared for dispatch.
For dairy ingredients, that starts with temperature checks on arrival and controlled chilled storage. Ingredients are weighed or pumped into tanks according to the product being manufactured, before cooks follow detailed recipes specifying quantities, times and temperatures.
The quality team tests the product before it is released for filling into cans or pouches. From there, further checks cover container seals, X-ray inspection and check weights before products undergo the critical thermal processing stage. Finished products are then packed, palletised and held for incubation and testing before release.
“From raw material coming in our gate through to a pallet of product going out the gate, we’ve got full governance and control over the product,” Scott said.
Dairy is also managed as an allergen throughout production. This includes dedicated colour-coded tubs and equipment, segregated allergen storage and controls around staff movement between production lines to reduce the risk of cross-contamination.
The science behind shelf-stable dairy
Central to SAFCOL’s food safety expertise is thermal processing. Products are sealed in their final container and processed in a retort, where carefully controlled heat and pressure make products commercially sterile and shelf-stable.
Mae said thermal processing is considered from the earliest stages of product development, rather than being treated as a final production step.
“We design everything that we do around thermal processing to make sure that it’s safe,” she said. “From the product development stage, we already know the criteria to make high-quality, safe food.”
Scott describes the retort as a “giant pressure cooker” that delivers the thermal process needed to make a product shelf-stable.
“That could be a custard pouch sitting on the shelf for months on end. It’s all down to that thermal process. It allows food to remain safe at room temperature for up to two years without chemical preservatives,” Scott said.
A technically led food safety culture
Food safety at SAFCOL is not confined to the technical and quality teams. “Everyone at SAFCOL is responsible for food safety,” Kieran said.
All staff undertake internal HACCP training led by Kieran and Scott, while retort operators and technical personnel complete additional thermal processing training through the company’s internal ‘Retort 101’ program.
That technical focus has deep roots within the business. Kieran, his Chief Operations Officer and previous senior operational leaders have all come from technical backgrounds.
“The importance of having good people behind quality and safety systems has been at the forefront of SAFCOL for the last 40 years,” Kieran said.
As the business has grown, so too has its investment in food safety expertise. The quality team now includes around six Quality Control Officers, while Mae’s technical team includes a Quality Systems Officer and Product Development Officer. Across SAFCOL, around 150 people are employed.
“The investment in people and culture has been huge,” Kieran said. “As the business continually grows and expands, the investment in the team gets bigger.”
That investment is being driven particularly by growth in demand for pouched products.
Building the next generation
Developing future food safety professionals is another priority for the team. SAFCOL has a close relationship with Adelaide University, including supporting graduate awards and providing opportunities for students and graduates to gain practical industry experience. Kieran and Mae also lecture at the university.
For Kieran, who began his own SAFCOL career as a Quality Control Officer, it’s proof that a role on the factory floor can be the beginning of a much bigger career.
“We really want to be working with grads as they come out of uni, getting them industry ready,” he said. “SAFCOL has shown, and I’m an example as well as many others, that you can start as a Quality Control Officer on the factory floor and the world’s your oyster.”
Mae sees developing those young professionals as an investment not just in SAFCOL, but in the future of food safety.
“They are the next generation of quality managers and technical managers who will govern all the safety systems of the food that we’re going to be consuming for the next 50 years,” she said.
Growing with confidence
That combination of people, technical expertise and strong food safety systems will become even more important as SAFCOL enters its next stage of growth.
The company has begun work on a new $80 million food manufacturing facility at Edinburgh in Adelaide’s north, designed to replace the existing Elizabeth factory and double its production capacity. The new facility is expected to be operational in early 2028.
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