Country's only wasabi farm set to close

Australia’s only wasabi farm, Shima Wasabi at Northdown, near Port Sorell, will close on June 1.

In a social media post this week it announced it would “continue to supply customers with our products as we wind down operations”.

Shima Wasabi was purchased by Hillwood Berries two years ago from TasFoods Limited, which acquired the business in 2016 from its founders Stephen and Karen Welsh.

The Welsh’ put their first wasabi plants into the one-hectare, undercover hydroponic growing system in the early 2000s.

Since then both fresh and dried wasabi products have been sold to restaurants interstate as well as supplying the local market.

Hillwood Berries CEO Simon Dornauf said that the tough decision was made because the business is at a “crossroads” and that a considerable investment was required to keep it going.

“We will continue to use the infrastructure to grow berries but the plant stock we inherited needs replenishment, and while we are not losing money, we’re not making a great deal of money so we knew we would need to scale it up or not continue,” he said.

“It’s very labour intensive and it’s not our core business so we had to look at this from a purely business perspective - it was disappointing to realise we would have to make the call we’ve made.

“The berry business had grown significantly over the past 15 years with 50ha in berries, and that’s 50 times bigger than the wasabi, so we need to play to our strengths.”

Mr Dornauf said the majority of the land and some of the growing tunnels will be leased out.

He also reiterated that the manager and staff had been doing a fantastic job, but the wasabi was “too small a focus compared to the rest of the business”.

“We gave it two years to see what we could do with it but we’ve come to realise that a combination of 18 months’ maturation time for new plants and the investment needed in more infrastructure to scale up was too much of a stretch.”

Shima Wasabi has a small team of casual staff that Mr Dornauf said management will assist to find new roles.

The plants will be sold to the general public.