THE Pye family is known for growing its famous potatoes at Parilla, in the Mallee region, but it relies on the ideal growing conditions of Virginia and surrounds to keep up its year-round supply of fresh vegetables.

Zerella Fresh, owned by the Pye Group family, supplies potatoes, carrots and onions to the major supermarkets of Aldi, Coles and Woolworths, as well as potatoes to McCain, Smiths and Lamb Western for processing into chips or fries.

It is also behind the Spud Lite range of potatoes, bagged with the Zerella Fresh branding and marketed as having 25 per cent less carbs than other potatoes.

About 1200 acres of land, across holdings at Virginia, Angle Vale, Port Gawler, Waterloo Corner, and Edinburgh is used to grow all three vegetables, while Virginia is also home to the company’s carrot processing and packaging facility.

Zerella Fresh general manager Renee Pye is passionate about helping consumers understand where their food comes from.

“People assume (supermarket vegetables) are just grown by some big business and there is no family involved or a lot of people think it comes from overseas, even though we’ve got so much agricultural land right here,” she said.

It is nice getting our story out there that we are a family business, our vegetables are being grown in Australia and we support a lot of Australian people and businesses around Australia.

“We have around 450 employees, from Robe to Mount Gambier, to the Mallee and here in Adelaide.”

The Virginia area is used for growing carrots, potatoes, and red and brown onions.

Its carrot-packaging facility uses some of the latest machinery in the industry, externally grading each individual carrot for size and weight (and automatically sorting for each supermarket’s preferences).

Carrots are harvested in the Virginia region from August to December, onions September to December, while potatoes and are typically harvested from October to mid-December.

Zerella Fresh farm manager Gavin Hibberd said the region is used for growing over winter because it is less likely to be affected by frost.

“You’ve got the Adelaide Hills on one side, the ocean on the other, so traditionally it’s reasonably frost resistant,” he said.

“Irrigation is our biggest security net against frost.

So for Virginia, because it is a market garden (and a) small square-scale countryside, we can have little plots of irrigation, watering more consistently, and you can eliminate frost that way.”

Gavin said last year the region had one of its wettest periods on record, with Zerella Fresh suffering some potato and onion crop losses.

“It was a challenge to grow a crop underneath the soil and get it out in good condition – we had our places where it was good but there were a lot of areas that suffered,” he said.

“The potatoes are no different to us in that they need to breath as well, and when they are submerged in water it takes all the oxygen out of the soil and they suffocate.

“Locally we will start planting again in April – carrots and onions will go in first and then our potatoes will be straight after those two.”

The Pye Group has owned Zerella Fresh (previously Zerella Holdings) since 2009, having rebranded it to reflect its goal of getting produce from paddock to store in the shortest possible time.

The Pyes had been involved with the Zerellas (who established the business in 1936) since the early 1990s, supplying them potatoes from their Mallee-based farm, Parilla Premium Potatoes. 

“My parents, Mark and Fiona, moved across from New Zealand in 1990,” Renee said.

“In the early 1990s the Mallee was just cereal cropping and livestock but there is a good underground aquafer, so my dad and pop (Allan) spotted an opportunity and started growing potatoes.”

The Pyes became the largest producer of potatoes and carrots in the Mallee region and have been credited with bringing other growers facing water issues in the Riverland to the area.

Last year the Pye Group opened the largest potato-packing facility of its kind in the southern hemisphere, at Parilla.

The $45 million, 15,000 square-metre warehouse, has a production capacity of 45 tonne an hour.

Even with losses, Renee said the company experienced higher potato yields than expected and has been able to take on extra orders to help mitigate a nationwide potato shortage.

The company also puts onions in long-storage and following a great onion harvest in 2021, became one of only two Australian producers to continue supplying the major supermarkets during last year’s shortages.