Gale Pacific Masks Farming Opportunities

Article by: Hari Yellina

Unless you’re monitoring the prospects of Melbourne-based industrial fabric company Gale Pacific, record-breaking grain crops and the tremendous surge in North American domestic dog ownership don’t seem to have much in common. Gale is perhaps one of the biggest names most farmers have never heard of, but its work is all over the bush around harvest time. Its large grain bunker covers, truck tarps, haystack covers, and hail netting are used to safeguard vast amounts of agricultural commodities all around Australia. Gale Pacific also offers shade cloth for beef cattle feedlots, dairies, and horticultural crops, as well as bird netting for fruit trees and vines.

Blockout curtains for piggeries and poultry sheds, coated fabric for the food industry, dam liners, erosion management cloth, display signage, and special coated anti-static fabrics for mine shafts are among the company’s various commercial offerings. Even for food packaging and throwaway cups and plates, the company introduced a biodegradable paper coated product as a compostable alternative to polystyrene. Gale Pacific is the parent business of the popular Coolaroo shade product line, which includes anything from beach umbrellas to backyard shade sails to roller blinds. The Coolaroo moniker is well-known throughout the world, not just in Australia. The United States accounts for more than a third of Gale’s total domestic and commercial earnings, with smaller but expanding markets in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East rounding out the picture.

Gale did, after all, invent the world’s first shadecloth knitting process, developing its fabric mill into an international advanced polymer textile and value-added enterprise. Its Melbourne facility now focuses on fabric coating, product assembly, and research, while knitted fabric is manufactured in Ningbo, China, and items for the Americas are tailored at its California and Florida locations. “Our US company is valued roughly $96 million today,” said John Paul Marcantonio, managing director, who is stationed in Florida with other top executives. “The market’s size and overall potential give it a significant growth opportunity for both domestic and commercial sales.”

Aside from its domestic shade and screening goods, Gale has capitalised on the market for dog bedding, which is currently hot due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has resulted in a boom in pet ownership in the United States and Europe. However, the success of Australia’s grain harvest is critical to Gale’s prospects, particularly in its commercial business. Big storage bunker operators like GrainCorp and CBH, whose temporary grain stacks and grain trucks need adequate protection from variable harvest weather circumstances, are notable customers. “The previous two years have been excellent for us,” Mr Marcantonio added, “despite two drought years dragging our grain sector sales virtually to zero.”