Sheryl Lowe, Naracoorte Community News

Successful Robe business, Transmutation, is owned and operated by Brad and Narelle Scott and has just received national recognition by being announced winners in the Australian Small Business Championship Awards (2021).

“We were chuffed to be finalists, but to be the winners is fantastic, it means we’re being taken seriously,” Brad told The News.

Naming the business Transmutation, is a clever play on words for the award-winning business which is based, like the meaning of the word, on changing the form of plastic bread tags into sought-after retail items.

Brad has a business background and said he always thought the environment was and is important and should be looked after; but, creating bowls, trays, pens and many other products from bread tags is as much a coincidence, as being in the right place at the right time, he said.

Aussie bread tags for wheelchairs

Recycled bread tag products were in production in South Africa before they launched Transmutation, but meeting Jenny Cooper connected the idea and the possibility of doing the same thing in South Australia.

Jenny had worked with a bread tag based charity raising funds for wheel chairs and when she moved to Australia, she brought the idea with her, Brad said.

Transmutation receives a 250 kilograms pallet of bread tags from the Adelaide-based charity ‘Aussie Bread Tags for Wheelchairs’ each month, where they are collected and sorted into colours by volunteers and packaged ready for transporting to Robe.

Brad makes a financial donation to the charity for each load and in a period of three years it has paid for 56 wheelchairs.

In that same time-frame, they’ve recycled 6.2 ton of bread tags which are transported from Adelaide to Robe by Dickens Transport free of charge, “which is just great,” Brad said.

The seaside town of Robe was the right place to launch the business, the locals embraced it and many of the tourists are people that support our ideals of reduce, reuse and recycle and appreciate professionally made usable products, Brad said.

“We want micro-factories set up everywhere”

Unlike many people with a good idea, Brad wants people to ‘steal’ his idea and will help anyone who is interested. “We want micro-factories set up everywhere.”

Brad and Narelle have already begun setting up micro-businesses to follow their lead.

Brad’s background in chemistry was an advantage in developing the machines to recycle the bread tags, he said and, “we’ve sold three of the machines and given one to a charity.”

“We’re not worried about plastic bread tags being replaced by cardboard ones.”

“It’s great. We’ll find something else to recycle, there’ll always be something to use, or re-use.”

“And of course, we’ve got this collaboration with Country Road,” but that’s a tight-lipped subject for now; however, Brad promises we’ll be first with the news!

“Next step – expansion”

The business has grown to the extent they need to expand and Millicent, in the South East of South Australia, is on the radar.

Finding the right property and enough accommodation for their workforce is a challenge, but they are keen to begin the next chapter of Transmutation.

Brad said he isn’t ready to say much more about that just yet, but he did reveal it will be a new product or products made from another ‘waste plastic item’ and they’ll need additional factory space, because “stuff is happening.

The award ceremony was originally planned for November 2021 but had to be re-scheduled due to covid restrictions and border closures.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t attend the ceremony in Sydney this month, so friends of ours attended in our place.”

“We weren’t expecting to win so we thought, they’ll probably just get a nice dinner, but at least we’ll be represented.”

“To win was amazing; our friends accepted the award at the presentation on our behalf, but the trophy has arrived in the mail safely and is proudly displayed in our showroom,” Brad said.

This article appeared in the Naracoorte Community News.