When Dave Reilly planted his first date palm in South Australia's Riverland in 1998, he never imagined that one day his plantation would grow big enough to supply major supermarkets.
But more than three decades after his family purchased the Gurra Downs property their investment is bearing plenty of fruit — and attracting attention.
Gurra Downs Date Company has received a $414,000 grant from the Woolworths Organic Growth Fund, which Mr Reilly said would help increase their production.
"We're getting a power upgrade and that's going to allow us to bring in some more equipment.
"It's quite labour intensive the way things are set up now with the way that we handle the fruit going through the packhouse."
Mr Reilly said the grant would make processing dates more efficient, by allowing the business to purchase automatic washing machines, sorting and grading machines, and an extra dehydration facility.
Reaping the rewards of research
Mr Reilly said his family's business had grown steadily over the years thanks to experimenting with date varieties.
"We were unaware of which were going to be the most commercial selections of date palms," he said.
"So effectively we've been running a research and development program for the last 20 years."
Mr Reilly said the family had brought in genetics from all over the world, with about 40 countries claiming to commercially grow dates.
In Australia, commercial dates have been farmed since the 1950s, after palms were brought into the centre of the country by Afghan Cameleers in the 1800s.
"Initially date palms had never been grown in the Riverland," Mr Reilly said.
"But we had some guidelines — primarily that was looking at where we were against the equator.
"If you look at those countries — that includes Iraq, Iran, Morocco — we started targeting varieties from those places.
"But honestly we've got varieties from Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia – all over the place."
Mr Reilly said overall it had been a surprisingly small number of cultivars that had been successful.
"That may not necessarily be climate alone," he said.
"It could also be how that fruit handles in a packhouse and the market recognition for those products."
As well as improving the efficiency of their organic plantation, Mr Reilly said the grant also provided evidence of a demand for locally grown dates.
Dates growing in popularity
The Australian date industry is small, with fewer than 25 growers producing about 13 tonnes of dates annually, according to the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation report in 2011.
Woolworths commercial director of fruit and vegetables Paul Turner said supporting Gurra Downs would help the supermarket chain reduce its reliance on imported dates.
"This is certainly going to mean that we can buy the Australian product first and start to build a much bigger base of Australian-grown product for dates," he said.
Mr Turner said the peak demand for dates in Australia was around Ramadan in April.
"It has been very much a part of the diet for ethnic populations for some time," he said.
