Section28, a luxury raw milk cheesemaker based in the Adelaide Hills, came from a passion for art and science. The brainchild of Kym and Joanne Masters, Section28 is an award-winning producer of handcrafted alpine style cheeses, with five cheeses currently available and expansion plans unfolding.
Kym grew up on a wheat and sheep farm in South Australia, then spent 25 years in investment banking before following his passion for cheesemaking. “Coming from a farm, I have a strong connection to agriculture and rural produce. When I lived and worked overseas, including in Europe, my fascination with creating a value-added natural product with a sense of place grew,” Kym said.
“I love how cheese captures the essence of the locality – even more so than wine I would argue – because it reflects the society, the history, the animals, the feed and the climate. And I love the combination of art and science that goes into cheesemaking. We view it as being 80% science and 20% art.”
Kym and Jo decided to focus on alpine style cheeses – hard and semi-hard – created principally for professional chefs.
Kym completed a short cheesemaking course at Regency TAFE and then signed up to do a Certificate 4 in Food Science. Meanwhile, Kym and Jo looked for a region to make their cheese and landed in the Adelaide Hills, in Woodside.
“We started the business in 2015 in two shipping containers, one 40-foot and one 20-foot. We did that for two reasons – if the business was going to work, then we would outgrow them pretty quickly and then we’d build a factory, but on the flip side of that, if the business was going to fail, we didn’t want a massive asset,” Kym said.
Once the shipping containers were fitted out with cheesemaking equipment, Kym started producing 300 litres a week, juggling this with his full-time finance job.
“We started with a lot of enthusiasm and not much knowledge! I was learning the technical cheesemaking skills and we started building a business strategy around it. We asked a lot of basic questions and people were very generous with their knowledge, including the team at Dairysafe,” Kym said.
“In the early days, I was doing cheesemaking on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and working in finance Monday to Thursday. After about 18 months, we built it up to about 2,000 litres a week. Then we started employing people and we expanded to 4,000 litres.”
Section28’s customer base is eastern seaboard restaurants, and when COVID hit in 2020, sales hit a wall. Post-COVID, Section28 has rebuilt its sales base and is now expanding its production facilities.
“The shipping container set-up was only designed to do 2,500 litres per week, so we decided to invest in a custom-built factory, designed to our specifications. We’re in stage one of a three-stage plan. Whether we get to stage two or three depends on market dynamics,” Kym said.
“The new factory means we can triple our production. In our current facility, we can store about 25,000 tonnes of cheese and process about 10,000 litres a week. We’re not at that level yet, but we’re building towards it.”
Alpine style cheeses are not well known in the Australian market, so Kym and Jo are spending time growing the category with professional chefs who can use Section28 cheeses as a key ingredient, and with consumers who can include products on cheese boards.
“We have distributors in each state, so we work closely with them. We’ve had to educate the market about why our cheeses are worth considering. Then you’ve got to deliver consistent, exceptionally high quality cheese, as there’s no tolerance in that market for substandard products.”
While Kym has been learning the art, science and business of cheesemaking, Dairysafe has been providing support and advice to ensure Section28 meets all food safety standards.
“We’re so fortunate in South Australia that our regulator, Dairysafe, has a positive approach to engagement with processors rather than a regulation approach. The team at Dairysafe understands what we’re doing and provides information and advice to help prevent issues rather than slapping us on the wrist when issues arise,” Kym said.
“I can honestly say that starting off in dairy processing is terrifying. You don’t know where to begin. But once you have systems and processes in place, it becomes a matter of consistent measuring, checking, improving, and benchmarking, and always being willing to learn.
“You’ve got to park your ego a bit and accept that you’re going to be asking dumb questions, and then work hard to implement the standards and advice on the basis that it will improve your business.”
Currently, Section28 takes half the milk of one dairy farmer in the Adelaide Hills and would like to expand to take milk from two local farmers.
“And we would like to work more closely with the dairy farmers. Because we make raw milk cheese, having a dedicated cheese herd would enable our products to reflect the essence of the location,” Kym said.
“The dairy industry has done such an amazing job with breeding, cow health and food safety practices to eliminate cell count, the milk is so clean now and the cell count is so low that quite often we are adding culture back into raw milk cheese to get the flavour we need for cheese.”
The future looks bright for Section28 with more plans for expansion on the horizon. For Kym and Jo, the delivery of the Section28 vision is gratifying.
“We pursued a passion and rolled the dice. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, but it’s very rewarding. Although, when you’re fixing plumbing or digging trenches in the rain to find blocked drains, you do question your life choices,” Kym said.
“But we get a thrill from seeing people eating our cheese and experiencing alpine styles for the first time. We get a real buzz out of that.”
