Travel Nuts
Californian housewife Debbi Fields turned
some great home-baked cookie recipes into a multi-million
dollar international corporation listed on the London Stock
Exchange. The world eats her semi-sweet chocolate with macadamia
nut cookies, her coconut and macadamia nut cookies, and her
white chunk with macadamia nut cookies.
 One
of Japan’s leading confectionery manufacturer, produces
its famous chocolate macadamia balls. Belgium adds macadamias
to its elite fine chocolate lines. Taiwan roasts and salts
macadamias as snacks. China embraces the macadamia as a premium
culinary ingredient upstaging the ubiquitous cashew. And at
the Hong Kong Food Festival, celebrated chef Ronald Emmenegger
steals the limelight with his gastronomic triumph - macadamia
nut fillet lamb loin in puff pastry.
 The
common thread in all these success stories is not just the
macadamia nut, but Pacific Plantations - the Australian company
that has established export clients in the US, Canada, the
UK, the Benelux countries, Germany, Japan, Korea, Taiwan,
China, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand.
Pacific Plantations is Australia’s largest privately-owned
grower and processor of macadamias, and with the total world
production of macadamias accounting for less than 2.5 per
cent of the total world trade in tree nuts, there is considerable
scope for future expansion. Australia now enjoys world leadership
in macadamia nut production and is confident of increasing
its share through and beyond the millennia because a high proportion
of plantings over the past decade will reach maturity at that
time.
 Pacific
Plantations’ export success is built not just on quality
but on providing a macadamia product for every application.
Nuts from their north-eastern New South Wales plantations
fan out across the world in a wide range of processed styles.
 There
are macadamias graded as gourmet snacks, macadamias for confectionery,
macadamias for cookies and ice cream, for fine food preparation,
for cereal and bakery lines, and for prescribed health diet
consumption. Pacific Plantations also produces macadamia oil
in both food and cosmetic grades. The oil is unique in its
physical and chemical properties, having a composition more
closely related to marine mammal oil than vegetable oil. It
has the added value of being a cholesterol free oil. In cosmetic
application, it enjoys the status of being one of “vanishing
oils” - those which penetrate the dermal layer of the
skin. It is used in massage therapy, as an aromatherapy extender,
and as an ingredient in the cosmetic lines of some of Europe’s
elite cosmetic companies.
The Australian macadamia nut industry is highly export oriented,
with about 70 per cent of the annual production destined for
overseas markets. It is also highly mechanised and innovative.
The current emphasis on scientific research into increasing
crop yields and improving production methods and processing
efficiencies will be vital to Australia maintaining and
increasing its world leadership.
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