A change in mindset from focusing on audit performance to a collaborative approach to quality and food safety saw the Mitani Group win the Dairysafe Food Safety Culture Award for 2024.
The Food Safety Culture Award is now in its fourth year and is the only award in Australia that acknowledges food safety culture in the food industry.
Mitani was selected from a pool of three finalists which also included Gelista and MOO Premium Foods. The Judging Panel was impressed by Mitani’s transformational changes and unwavering commitment to food safety.
Mitani is a private, family-owned food manufacturing company based in South Australia, established in 1979 but with a history dating back to 1954.
Mitani manufacturing spans four core areas – frozen extruded products, chilled butter, mayonnaise and dressings, and dry blend and pack – delivering products as value-added items or products for private label packaging.
Across dairy-based products in 2023-24, Mitani bought 250,000kg of Australian butter, 30,000kg of New Zealand butter and 260,000kg of South Australian milk-based products such as sour cream and yoghurt, with requirements for these raw materials growing to keep up with customer demand.
In recent years, the Mitani Group has seen significant transformation under third-generation leadership, consisting of QA & Safety Manager Melissa Coventry, Chief Sales Officer Lewis Mitani, and joint CEO team and sisters Elyse Norton and Tammy Baker.
Self-described as “a family of scientists” who are deeply committed to a positive food safety culture, the Mitani siblings shifted from a large QA membered team to a model where everyone in the business is responsible for food safety, fostering collaboration and empowerment.
“The Food Safety Culture Award celebrates our journey and the emphasis we place on food safety, food quality and happy customers,” said Elyse.
“Our QA department has shifted its focus from passing audits to a continuous improvement mentality. QA can’t do that on its own, you need to collaborate across all departments – not just production, but with our R&D team and our sales team – to make sure that we are continuously improving the way we work to ensure that we can maintain our high quality.
“Our QA department is as small as it’s ever been, yet we are seeing the best quality results in our history, based on customer feedback and our own internal product testing.”
Melissa noted environment testing over the past 12 months shows Mitani’s collaborative approach to cleaning also delivering results.
“We’ve been able to get our maintenance team and production team on board with cleaning and how to clean more effectively. We’ve encouraged our teams to take ownership of their machinery and ownership of how they clean,” Melissa said.
“We’ve seen a huge change from working in a siloed departmental approach to a whole team approach. If there are issues, everyone in the company can raise a corrective action and it will be taken seriously. It no longer falls on the QA team to walk around assessing and trying to fix problems.”
Investments in infrastructure, cleaning, and people and culture demonstrate their dedication to continuous improvement. Mitani’s new change management system supports 20 ongoing improvement projects.
“I refuse to change what we do day-to-day because an audit is happening or a visitor is coming. I don’t tell production when an audit’s happening, I just tell them it’s on the cards. That way, every day is an audit day. It actually takes the pressure off the business because there are no extra resources we have to put in to prepare for visits or audits, or fix problems caused by complacency,” Melissa said.
“We don’t develop people to babysit systems or not question what they do. I instil in my team that they must question how things are done and change the system if it will add value or make things safer.
“This also makes work more interesting, fun and rewarding for everyone. We plan around being the best version of ourselves every day, rather than when an audit’s coming, which is an old-style approach.”
Elyse, Melissa, Lewis and Tammy have pushed for transparency across departments since taking on senior management roles.
“We’ve come in as the third generation and we’ve certainly changed things up in the last two years,” Elyse said.
“We’ve really pushed for transparency across departments and for open communication. Previously, communication was on a need-to-know basis. We’ve shifted completely away from that to open communication and trust.
“We trust that we’ve got the right people in the right jobs and they’re going make the right decisions for the company.”
Elyse said this culture begins at recruitment. “Quality is at the forefront. We specifically recruit people who have food experience or have a quality-driven temperament,” she said.
A program of food quality and safety training is also in place. “Food safety is all about combating complacency,” Melissa said.
“My job is to remind people why food safety is key. Being Mitani, a family business, we don’t just make food to sell. We make food for our families, for our kids. That’s why it must be great quality and safe.
“We’ve made sure everyone has the same objectives about why they do what they do. Maintenance works hard to mitigate problems, which mitigates food safety issues. Production is focused on food quality and food safety. The cleaning team want to do efficient cleaning to ensure there are no food safety issues. We’ve removed the barriers to doing our jobs well and we’re all focused on food safety and quality.
“The results speak for themselves. Downtime is minuscule in comparison to a few years ago.”
Product sales have also increased in recent years. Lewis said Mitani experienced 40% growth in 2023, off the back of 16% growth in 2021 and 2022.
“When you grow that fast, you need to trust your secondary layer of senior management to help us make the right decisions and support us through those decisions,” Lewis said.
Another key part of the Mitani business is its R&D department, which is working on products with key food suppliers.
“The vast majority of what we manufacture will end up in the supermarkets – Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, but we deal with their primary suppliers. Companies like major poultry companies, major red meat companies and salad processors,’ Lewis said.
“We work with these companies to develop new products. We’ve got R&D pipelines out to two years and we’re signing off on products now that will be launched in 12 to 24 months. These are innovations mostly in the salad, vegetable, red meat and poultry sectors.”
A recent innovation was the production of butter discs for packaged steak. Mitani produces most of the butter discs sold in Australia.
“We’ve been creating butter products for about 10 years but about three years ago companies started wanting to value add, and butter discs were an innovation we were involved in,” Elyse said.
“That has absolutely gone through the roof. We buy in butter, add flavours, extrude it and get it out to meat producers. It’s been a learning curve for us to safely handle butter and get it out in a timely fashion.”
To learn more about Mitani, click here.
