Golden North reveals its plans for greatness in Murray Bridge

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Golden North is an iconic South Australian company, but Dimi Kyriazis wants to turn it into something more: a national powerhouse.

That was the motive behind the company’s upcoming move to the Murraylands, its co-owner revealed at a business breakfast hosted by Murray Bridge News on Wednesday.

Right now, in manufacturing ice cream at Laura, Golden North generated revenue of $30-40 million per year.

Moving to Murray Bridge would allow the company to reduce its transport costs, triple its production to 10,000 litres of ice cream per hour, and expand into product lines it had never produced before.

That’s right – you might see Golden North-branded cheese or yoghurt on your supermarket shelves as soon as next year.

That would lift revenue to about $100 million almost immediately, Mr Kyriazis suggested.

But his ambitions were higher still.

He hoped to grow the company to the point where it could go toe-to-toe with the three heavyweights of Australia’s ice cream industry – Streets, Peters and Bulla.

If you didn’t aim for greatness, you wouldn’t be great, he said.

As Murray Bridge News reported in July, Mr Kyriazis and former X Convenience owner Steve Kosmidis bought out Golden North’s other shareholders earlier this year and plan to move the company from Laura, in the Mid North, to the former Beston Foods factory on Maurice Road, Murray Bridge.

Key to their plans will be award-winning cheesemaker Paul Connolly, an operations manager at the Murray Bridge factory prior to Beston’s collapse last year.

They also hope to lean on the expertise of many other ex-Beston employees, a number of whom have already been hired to reopen the hard and semi-hard cheese production lines which have been gathering dust at the factory for the past year.

As it turns out, the pair had had their eye on the Murray Bridge factory for some time.

“I remember saying to Steve two and a half years ago: Beston’s in Murray Bridge cannot keep going the way they’re going,” Mr Kyriazis said.

“That (site) will become available one day, and when it does, you’re gonna buy it.”

Beston’s Jervois factory, home to its mozzarella production line, was not included in the sale.

The reason Beston had collapsed was that it had focused on too few products and left itself vulnerable to global price fluctuations, Mr Kyriazis suggested.

“The difference between us and everyone else that’s ever run that production plant is we’re not just cheese; we’ll be ice cream, cheese, hopefully yoghurt, fresh cream and other ancillary products,” he said.

“Cows like to milk a little bit more in spring, a little bit less in winter … you need a range (of products) where you can park the milk, and also protect cash flow.

“If we need cash, we put it into ice cream; when we’re cash flow comfortable, we make cheese, because it can sit for six months.”

Golden North will spend close to $20 million upgrading its new base of operations to be fit for purpose, with better refrigeration, firefighting systems and amenities.

The quality of its ice cream should increase when production begins in Murray Bridge, as it will have the ability to freeze its products more quickly, reducing the number of crunchy ice crystals which sneak into each tub.

Between 45 and 90 staff will initially be employed at the factory, though Mr Kyriazis hoped that number might increase over the next decade.

There’ll be school tours and a shop at some stage, too.

In the meantime, Golden North’s staff at Laura have been working hard to build up the extra 13 to 14 weeks of stock the company will need to fill orders around the time of its big move.

Redundancy was ‘the best thing that could have happened to me’

Mr Kyriazis’ journey in ice cream manufacturing began almost 20 years ago.

He had been working as a top-level manager with Balfours when that company ran into financial trouble, was sold, and he was made redundant.

After spending some time at home with his wife and newborn son, the first call he made after deciding to go back to work was to Golden North.

At the time, Mr Kyriazis said, the company was barely breaking even, having been undervalued and partially asset-stripped by the national conglomerate which had owned it during the 1990s.

Ironically, National Foods had been more focused on its factory in Murray Bridge – the same one Golden North will move into next year.

Back in the 2000s, though, Golden North’s facility had barely been upgraded in decades, several key staff members were on the verge of retirement, and 75 per cent of the company’s product was sold under different brand names, like Black and Gold.

“We had the privilege of losing a lot of money making products for other people,” he said.

Nonetheless, he soon bought in, becoming one of five South Australian owners of the company.

As its sales manager, he shifted Golden North’s focus from volume to profit and cash flow.

Around the same time, the price of milk nosedived amid a price war between the major supermarkets.

That was dreadful for producers, hundreds of whom marched through Murray Bridge in protest, but turned out to be the break Golden North had needed – the company paid off its debts and invested in new equipment for the first time in years.

There had been some extraordinarily difficult periods since then, he recounted, including the loss of major contracts and a 50% sales downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the company’s overall trajectory had been positive, and its revenue had grown as far as it was ever likely to do at Laura.

‘I’m a massive relationship person’

The impression Mr Kyriazis left with the members of Wednesday’s crowd was that of a leader with an understanding about how to do business in regional Australia: by valuing people.

“If you can’t have a beer at the end of (a business transaction), you shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.

He saw it as the responsibility of a big company like Golden North to make sure that everyone in the supply chain was on a sustainable footing.

That meant helping the Murraylands’ dairy industry grow, helping farmers regain their confidence, and helping them make back some of the money they had lost in recent years, including by paying them in a more timely fashion.

“We’re no good to our suppliers and customers if we’re not profitable, just like they’re no good to us if they’re not profitable,” he said.

“It really is a big team effort when you’ve got a lot of stakeholders in your business.”

His aspiration was for Golden North to build long-term relationships in the Murraylands, and make sure the region’s reputation became known around Australia and the world.

“If we treat our business and the people that we’re dealing with as transactions, we will end up in the same place as everyone else that has been in that Murray Bridge site,” he said, referencing the collapses of Beston and United Dairy Power before it.

“We want to be a $400 million dairy company: one that buys the most milk, the most cream, the most ingredients that anyone’s buying in South Australia.”

It was good to be back

About 80 people gathered for Wednesday’s breakfast at the Bridgeport Hotel, the first event of its kind to be presented by Murray Bridge News, building on the successful launch of the Murraylands Business Awards.

Many remarked that it was good to be back in a similar setting to the breakfasts formerly run by Business Murray Bridge, and the Murraylands Enterprise Estate before that.

Two other local leaders also spoke at the event: Bowhill Engineering’s Jodie Hawkes, on the importance of resilience, people and purpose; and Murray Bridge Mayor Wayne Thorley, on the rural city’s growth plans.

Murray Bridge News will present the next Murraylands Business Breakfast sometime in early 2026.