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Cambinata Yabbies
Cambinata Yabbies can thank the 1991 ‘recession we had to have’ for its creation. With six children being educated in the city, the Nenke family found expenses outweighing income until a yabby-farming hobby became a business. “We had yabbies in the dam and had enjoyed eating them. I always believed they were better than prawns and that we should be marketing them,” says proprietor Mary Nenke.
A chance connection to a Perth restaurant opened up the yabby trade to the local market, quickly followed by export. “We were dealing with flying interstate and, when you live in Western Australia, that’s the same as exporting,” says Nenke. “It was just as easy to go overseas.”
Although their first export to Singapore was a disaster—”they’d come back to us with mortalities because they didn’t have facilities to keep yabbies”—they have since found markets throughout Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
And having learnt the hard way, after chasing a Hong Kong debtor through the courts for four years, Nenke advocates finding a good agent: “We now have a very good Hong Kong agent that we’ve been dealing with since 1997, so it’s about building those relationships and finding the right people.”
Distance has also taught them the importance of a good website, as well as visiting countries and exhibiting at trade shows. Nenke says their big break was the 1996 Fine Food Show in Singapore where they met two WA government representatives that helped them through the early stages of export. Since then, Cambinata Yabbies has taken home many accolades, including an Australian Export Heroes Award from the Australian Institute of Export last year.
Future growth will probably come from their gourmet line says Nenke, referring to the products of their export kitchen where flavoured yabbies and abalone are sealed in jars. This has helped them manage the continuity of supply: “That’s one of the reasons we’ve done the value-adding, because we can have oversupply very quickly. We now have a factory where we can freeze our product and that has been really important for the future.”
Tourism is also a fledgling side business, she adds. “We have people here every day of the week. We turned our shearing shed into a function centre, so we have areas where people can eat, and of course they come to buy the product.”
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