Little Tuna Is on a Mission to Bring Sustainable Australian Fish to Supermarkets
A new generation of a Cairns fishing family is pioneering sustainably caught Australian preserved tuna. Co-founder Kate Lamason explains how demand is shaping the business.
Fact file
Co-founders: Kate Lamason, 38, and Rowan Lamason, 39
Investors: Self-funded
First customer: 2015, through the Lamason family business, Great Barrier Reef Tuna in Cairns, and also via ecommerce
Headquarters: Cairns, Queensland
Staff: Five
What’s your elevator pitch?
“We’re bringing Australian tuna back to consumers and supporting local fishing families. We’re sustainable, traceable and transparent. The core range from Little Tuna is processed and jarred in Australia.”
What was the problem you are aiming to solve?
“Australians consume 336 million tins of tuna every year – 72 per cent of us eat tinned tuna but none of the tuna that has been available on our supermarket shelves is Australian. The industry started sending all its tuna manufacturing offshore about 25 years ago in search of cheaper processing. Most Australian fishers sell the tuna they catch to an agent and it ends up being minced up with tuna from all over the world. We work directly with Australian fishers and can trace the tuna via QR codes for consumers to scan and ‘meet the fishers’.”
How did you get it off the ground?
“I’m an accountant and my husband, Rowan, has a marketing degree. His father founded Great Barrier Reef Tuna in 1990 and today the family has a fish market and operates two tuna-fishing vessels out of Cairns. When Rowan told me that the tinned tuna we were eating at home wasn’t Australian, we decided to make a product ourselves. We wanted to showcase the quality of Australian fish – not too salty, no preservatives and all-local ingredients. We tested about 100 recipes at home and came up with the Little Tuna flavours. Our family started eating it then our friends did, too. After that we commercialised it, preserving it in jars here in Cairns, and from there it’s grown significantly.”
Ten years on, how are you expanding?
“Our new East Coast Tuna Co. product is made to our recipe and canned in Thailand – the albacore tuna are frozen whole and sent there by ship. We survey our customers once a year and listen to their feedback. They told us it’s important to them to support Australian fishers and sustainability but because of the economy they’re also really conscious of price – the majority said they would buy our tuna in a tin. There are no options onshore with the capacity and Marine Stewardship Council certification so we found an MSC cannery in Thailand with a good reputation – they also meet workplace health and safety guidelines. We flew over to meet them and get it off the ground. We started shipping East Coast Tuna Co. cans to our direct customers this January and it’s been on shelves in independent supermarkets around Australia since February.”
What’s next?
“As well as our boats out of Cairns we now support another four fishers out of Mooloolaba and have had interest from others down the east coast. There are only 39 tuna fishers from the tip of Queensland to South Australia, and in WA there are two. That’s not a lot of boats, which is why it’s possible to trace the fish back to the people who caught it. We export a lot of fresh fish, too, but until Little Tuna no-one was doing any value-add at all. We love this industry and sharing the stories so that people can see who the fishers are and trust that they work sustainably. We are MSC-certified – all vessels are monitored by on-board cameras, with electronic logbooks and strict catch quotas. They use longlines and circle hooks, which significantly reduce bycatch. We want to see East Coast Tuna Co. in major supermarkets – Australian fishers deserve a spot there. We would also love to see bulk manufacturing come back onshore but to do that we’d have to build a multi-million-dollar facility. It’s a long-term goal – aim high and dream big!”
