Casey
0:00:00
Welcome to the Real P3 Podcast. Every Monday, join the Unstoppable team as we explore powerful stories of resilience and inspiration from the leaders shaping our industry. Tune in to start your week with motivation and insights that empower you to be unstoppable in life and business.
Philip
0:00:27
Hi everyone. Today I'm sitting with a really, really special guest called Greg Pankhurst from Australia. We are currently sitting in Indonesia at a seaside resort that belongs to Greg. Greg's been hosting us for a few days on an Upfield Global Focus program tour and just on my side, it's been the most amazing experience to date. Greg, how are you doing? Yeah, Vaush, good afternoon. Welcome to Indonesia.
Greg
0:00:53
Which means welcome in Indonesian. Been honoured to host a group of 11 extremely interesting people on a Nuffield scholarship trip and happy to sit down here and have a yarn and a chat
Greg
0:01:06
about life in general and what happens in Indonesia with Vaush. Yeah, so Greg, your story has just fascinated me.
Philip
0:01:16
I'm really excited to have the opportunity and for you to take the time to record this with me. You came over here in 1992. You were 22, 23 years old. How was that experience? What got you to move over to Indonesia?
Philip
0:01:28
Because back then that must have been completely unknown.
Greg
0:01:31
Yeah, look, I was obviously 22 years old. I was a youngster. I'd just finished university in Australia. I'd been working for two years in the feedlotting sector in Australia for a Japanese trading company called Marabini and I was lucky enough to secure an assistant manager's job at a new feedlot in Australia called Rangers Valley which is now world-renowned for
Greg
0:01:53
some of the best Wagyu beef in the world. I was there and I was buying the grain and I was doing the feeding and I was buying the cattle and I was given a lot of responsibility as a young guy. And then someone came along to me one day and said, Greg, we have just started a feedlot in Indonesia, would you like to go and run it? And look, I'd never left Australia. I was a very simple country boy who had come from very meager, simple coming.
Greg
0:02:22
And they said, go over to Indonesia and have a look. And so I went over, came over and had two or three days here, had a quick look around. Came back and they offered me the job and within six weeks here I was in Indonesia. I packed up and I came over with two suitcases and I came over to run a 17,000 head feedlot literally in the middle of nowhere. Yeah I mean this is where we were today right? We're on an island Lampung or that was before
Greg
0:02:45
this? No, so I came to Lampung but I didn't go to that feedlot today. I went to another feedlot which was a brand new feedlot in 1992 which was the biggest feedlot in Asia at the time and it was a big challenge. We had a big security fence around it. There was quite a lot of unrest in the area. There were tigers outside, there were elephants outside. It was an amazing situation and it was pretty well the start of the live import business of cattle from Australia to Indonesia.
Philip
0:03:17
Yeah, Craig, I just think it's fascinating and over the years, I mean you're fluent in Indonesian, you've been our translator as well and I think you referred to yourself as a sort of Australian-Indonesian businessman and how you're able to navigate both worlds and it's just been fascinating watching how you operate with the people and I've personally fallen in love with Indonesia, like absolutely fallen in love with the people. They're really friendly, they're really happy and your influence here is really evident.
Philip
0:03:43
So the feedlot we went today, could you just share the sort of scale and how that came
Greg
0:03:47
about? So that feedlot today was a feedlot myself and my business partner Dickie Adewoso and an Australian joint venture partner started back in 2000. So we bought the land in 2000 and Dickie and I, Indonesian business partner and myself were lucky to be given the full go-ahead, the full rights, the full whatever we wanted to do to build a new feedlot in Indonesia. And so it was a from nothing greenfields feedlot so
Greg
0:04:15
about 200 hectares of land and to buy 200 hectares of land in Indonesia is no easy task. So I think the 200 hectares of land we bought from nearly 300 individual parties. So everyone owns half a hectare or 0.75 hectare and those that are big-time owns a hectare. So there was a huge number of deals to secure that parcel and in 2001 we had secured the land and we started to build a 7,000 feet lot. We imported our first cattle in February 2022 and since that time they've imported well over 1.5
Greg
0:04:53
probably somewhere in the vicinity 1.7 million cattle. All from Australia? All from Australia. Feedlot has a capacity of about 22,000 to 23,000 head of cattle at the moment and some 15 years ago we added a further feedlot up in the middle of Sumatra, a place called Medan which holds about 5,000 head. So I was lucky enough to own and run that feedlot for 16 years and then in 2016 I had been in Indonesia for 25 years and I was getting tired and my family who'd spent a lot of time here were also in Australia
Greg
0:05:30
and I felt that I wanted to go back and spend a bit of time with my family in Australia, aging mum and dad as well. So we sold our share in the feedlot, we sold down our 30% and moved on and I was very very lucky for the people that bought the feedlot. They retained me as a consultant and I still have the very very honorable position of still coming here every six weeks to spend time with the people and help them out and use my ideas and look at what they're doing to help the business grow. And since I sold the business,
Greg
0:06:05
it has certainly moved ahead in leaps and bounds and they've got some amazing people there looking after it. So yeah, an honor to stay on and an honor to stay on in Indonesia, which is a very, very special part of me. We can see that your love for the place and this community as well. You got like, I saw today we went to a prawn farm. It's a prawn agro farm. And these guys get supplied, I think you call them fingerlings, I'm not sure what. Yeah, we do or Valo I think they call them.
Philip
0:06:34
Yeah, so kind of like a broiler agro project but with prawns. And when you introduce yourself to the guys, I could see a change in their face when they realized who you were. So you're clearly well known in this area, you're really well respected. You can see the love, you've built this beautiful house on the ocean here and you're turning it into a resort now as well and you can see your footprint's
Philip
0:06:55
going to last a lifetime here and I think your impact on this community is
Philip
0:06:58
going to last generations. Yeah I hope that's the case and as you can see our staff, a lot of staff here and a lot of staff have been here 10 or 15 years and we've got staff, you met staff today that have been with me for 32 years. I employed them in May 1992, I employed some of those staff you met today. So staff, people, relationships in places like this are so important. And also back on my business partner who again I met in April 1992. He was in fact my boss back
Greg
0:07:30
in those days and we have maintained an amazing relationships and people say I'm his brother and I will say exactly the same. We talk two or three times a day, just general chit-chat. We still have a lot of business interests together but relationships and the relationships I've built here have been amazing.
Philip
0:07:51
I think that refers to life. You've come to Indonesia, you've partnered with an Indonesian and that was kind of your advice like for future business ventures or anyone wanting to invest in Indonesia, that was one of your key take-homes last night was make sure you get a partner, make sure it's a good partner and that relationship is nurtured.
Philip
0:08:06
How valuable has that been to your growth here? You cannot put a value on that. That is all it is really at the end of the day. Work ethic is very, very important but when you come somewhere that you don't understand, you don't know, you're very, very vulnerable and we all become very vulnerable at certain times of our life. I came here as a young guy, I was very vulnerable, I had no idea, I'd never left Australia. I was thrown in the deep end, I was thrown out in the middle of nowhere and remembering 1992
Greg
0:08:40
Indonesia, much of Australia and the Western world, we didn't have handphones. Handphones didn't exist and so where I was dropped we didn't have a phone, there was no handphones. And I existed on a fax machine, which was back in town. And some people would not even know what a fax machine was. Someone would send you a piece of paper through over the telegraph lines and that fax would be then sent out to the feedlot.
Greg
0:09:08
And I was running a 17,000 head feedlot. We were buying 60 or 70,000 head of cattle a year and I was running that on a fax machine that was back in town but there was no other alternative. That's what we did. So the business part, just to get back to that, was so important. He was an excellent guy, he is still an excellent guy. We've built a lot of other businesses here in Indonesia as well and again it's all about that
Greg
0:09:36
person and all about the relationship you have with that person that makes the relationship work.
Philip
0:09:42
And I think it's a lesson, I mean, I'm from Zimbabwe and I think there's been huge resistance for embracing sort of local partners. I mean, I'm a fourth generation Zimbabwean and a lot of us believe we are locals, we're not viewed as locals regardless of how many generations we've been there. And definitely in hindsight and going forward, and again to anyone anywhere in the world going out of their own countries and into new territories or new countries because opportunities are theirs.
Philip
0:10:08
Definitely what Greg is saying, I want to echo that, is find someone who has the local knowledge can go a long way in helping any sort of business and they know where the opportunities are, they know how to, the sort of government or official ropes are around, they know about the culture and a lot of working with people is learning their culture which you clearly radiate today, you know exactly where the cultural boundaries are, you've advised us really well what to wear, how to sort of present ourselves, and that goes a
Philip
0:10:33
really long way in becoming a success in any country.
Speaker
0:10:38
Stay with us. We'll be right back.
Greg
0:10:41
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Greg
0:11:12
So true that I still go out into places where, you know, 270 million people in Indonesia. So I'm going to say that again. 270 million people, like it's just massive. And where we live here, we live in the province of Lampung on the island of Sumatra. Sumatra has about 40 million people. The province of Sumatra, the province of Lampung has about 7 or 8 million people. I'm very well known in the community here but I
Greg
0:11:47
am not a local so a lot of people know, oh that's Pat Gregg, that's the Australian who is heavily involved in the cattle industry. But it has taken 30 years to do that and I really have great desire to keep that. I'm not trying to talk myself up, but it would be lovely to be able to maintain some sort of – the people could know who I still was because I do – I drastically and desperately want to continue to give back to the Indonesian economy and the Indonesian people.
Greg
0:12:23
So a way to do that is for you to be well known as well. And so I do want to be continued to be known in the area. And I think I'm doing a reasonable job of that. But again, I'm not trying to talk myself up at all, but it's essentially where we live here. I am essentially the only white person, Caucasian,
Greg
0:12:43
that nothing to do with your skin color, but people obviously look at you and say, oh, he sticks out, what's he doing here. But then when I talk to people, I speak reasonable Indonesian and I can reference everything in this province where we live so people can understand that I do know what's going on here.
Philip
0:13:02
Yeah, it's been great. I just want to say it again, I've been blown away with how the Indonesian people are. It's my first time in Indonesia and what I can tell you is people are incredibly friendly. They're very welcoming. Today was one of the highlights of my life. Like there's very few days that stick out. One of them was swimming with the seals in Plettenberg Basin, Africa. One of those moments where like, am I really here? Today was another one. And we went to see a sort of more like a rural layers project, although they did have 16 layers. And the bus parked a little bit further away than he should have,
Philip
0:13:39
so we were able to just walk through. The people coming up to us, and there was an obvious language barrier, but they were just so friendly, smiling, taking photos of us, so happy to have us, even though there was zero communication. We took photos of people, they took photos of us, and I said to someone later, you know,
Philip
0:13:57
with all unstoppable vision and the resilience and stuff we're going on, I'd really love to be able to put Indonesia on that map because I'm sure that's contagious. You have a culture, you have a people, it's a third world country, it's not thriving in a lot of sectors, but yet again, this happiness and contagious laughter and just togetherness, it was almost overwhelming for me, Greg. And I can see why you fall in love with the place. I've already fallen in love with the people. So I do feel you coming here, you setting up what you've done.
Philip
0:14:29
I mean, you've got, I think with the Fidelona, over 600 employees. Every one of those lives impacted, every one of those lives have been bettered. So the blast radius effect of you setting up a business has faltered down in the families and ultimately made everything a lot nicer for those guys. And being able to share this with you on this trip, it's blown me off the water. And I've seen a lot.
Philip
0:14:48
I'm a third world boy from the middle of Norway, Africa and this has absolutely stumped me.
Greg
0:14:53
Yeah, no. So, you know, it was a special day today. We did, we were dropped in the middle of nowhere to go and have a look at a chicken operation and we walked down the road a little bit. And essentially, we were 12 foreigners walking down a road where a lot of those people would never ever have seen a foreigner in their village.
Philip
0:15:13
You can see it.
Greg
0:15:14
Let alone walking into their shop. So we walked into a shop there today and it was a little hardware shop and she sold everything from flyers to light fittings and seven or eight white guys walked in there and we had a yarn to the lady and everything was great. She took a photo and that would have really resonated with her that we went in there, we had a yarn to where we talked and it resonated with
Greg
0:15:40
all of us as well didn't it because it was a just a it was a lovely as you said that's what Indonesia is about. We walk down that street go in say g'day to people they're all very welcoming they all say hi I'm sure if it was sort of five o'clock in the afternoon and they were having a cup of tea they would have even invited us in to have a cup of tea.
Philip
0:16:01
Absolutely.
Greg
0:16:02
It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon so it wasn't cup of tea time but there was every option to have a cup of tea if we wanted.
Philip
0:16:07
Big time. So yeah, definitely today is going to have one of the most profound impact on the rest of my life. I am grateful that you've hosted us and taken us around. And then part of this Global Focus Program tour is unpacking each day. We landed in Jakarta yesterday.
Philip
0:16:23
No, the day before yesterday. The day before yesterday. It's just a blur from the moment. Sunday we landed in Jakarta beautiful city. You took us over to an island that they built. I've never heard of this. I didn't even know there was a concept. They'd pumped sand out of the ocean and built an island. How big is that island? Because we saw it. That island would be a
Greg
0:16:40
thousand hectares. We drove for over 10 minutes. We didn't even get to the end of it. On a man-made island. Man-made island just off the coast of Jakarta. High net wealth people investing there Chinese high rise like there was we saw that block of flats there that would have been 25 stories high. There was a McDonald's and a Starbucks. There was everything there. The peak it was called Pekai Pondok Indah Kapuk so it's a very very new development within 15 minutes of the Sukarno-Hatta airport. Jakarta's big airport, one of the busiest airports in the world.
Greg
0:17:23
And this has been built to house high net worth people that travel extensively throughout Indonesia and so they can live there. And the work from home concept, they can live there work from home and if they want to go somewhere in Indonesia or somewhere in the world, they're 15 minutes from the airport and every facility, you saw it there, every facility under the sun. You can't believe
Greg
0:17:47
this island's been man-made. It just shows you how amazing humans are when we do apply ourselves right? Yeah. So from there we then drove through, I forget all the places now, but we ended up on a ferry. So we drove through the center of Jakarta, so we drove up Jalan Sediman which is the main street. We got out and we we went into a supermarket there and it was really nice that some of the scholars actually found their products in that Yeah, some of the peers would own the products that they deal with and they work with in that supermarket
Greg
0:18:17
in underneath the Grand Hyatt in Jakarta so, you know one of the best high value supermarkets in Jakarta and we went out the front and we had some photos in front of Bundaran Hagi which is known as the center of Jakarta. So we drove up there and then we headed out to Marrakech. Oh and on the way we had that magnificent meal of Padang food.
Philip
0:18:43
It was interesting. That was a spread of food which had fish and beef and a couple of body organs that I don't think I could identify.
Greg
0:18:51
And what did you think of the spice there?
Philip
0:18:53
It was delicious.
Philip
0:18:54
The food was delicious. I didn't eat some of the plates. I was a bit nervous. My gut isn't ready for it. But it was fascinating the way they did it.
Philip
0:19:02
They brought out a spread of everything they had, put it all on the table. There was 11, 12 of us at the table and I think there probably was 60 plates on the table, wasn't there?
Philip
0:19:10
Yeah, and then you can eat what you want and then they work out what you've eaten. And then they take everything back to the kitchen and I suppose that gets passed on to the next bugger who comes through there. A really interesting way of doing it. So yeah, that lunch was a treat. It was a
Philip
0:19:22
for sure Indonesian experience of moat. And then on the boat we went on to a roll-on-roll-off ferry in Merak. So it wasn't very full and we stood out in the deck and we all had photos with everyone on the boat as well which was a good and then four of us actually got up onto the bridge. I went and saw the captain and four of us got to go up on the bridge and have a drive of the boat. So you know, it is this lovely place where if you can communicate and if you can talk to people and
Greg
0:19:51
I had 10 minutes with the captain, he'd just come out of midday prayers and I just saw him come out of the mosque on the boat and I went up to him and had a 10 minute talk to him and at the end of the discussion I said oh is there any chance we can get up on the bridge? He said oh yeah yeah I can get a few of you up on the bridge so I ducked back and grabbed and fortunately you didn't come up. Yeah I'm only hearing about this now. Yeah it was a great experience to take some people up on the bridge and
Greg
0:20:20
we've got eight or nine of the group out on little tiny fishing boats this afternoon. They said oh do you think we could get a fishing boat to go out into the bay so they're out cruising the bay this morning. Indonesia is such a great place people want to help you, they want to facilitate things for you, they want to help you, they want to engage with you, they want to learn more about you
Greg
0:20:45
because you're quite unique and you are showing interest in them and especially if you're doing things with them, they are so happy about that. So, you know, it's very special that way.
Philip
0:20:57
It was, and even the boat and like even not able to communicate with everyone, they're just happy that you're on. It's just, I can't, I can't get over it. I'm really like all struck by the people in the culture. I'm like, yeah, I get really grateful. And then today, I mean, look, we're staying in Greg's resort here.
Philip
0:21:14
Highly recommended, by the way, for anyone who does travel to Indonesia and Lampung. And we did a prawn farm, which I sort of spoke about earlier. Really interesting and really good to know that it costs $3 a kilogram for prawns at source.
Philip
0:21:27
So restaurants, you better hold your hat and for sure see an opportunity in prawn farming because it's still a niche, but you know what? You can raise it like a chicken. There's opportunity for expansion on that particular livestock species.
Philip
0:21:41
From there, we went to the feedlots. Again, Greg built this amazing feedlot. I mean, you've got these massive fans in some of the buildings. You've got a lot of Brahman cattle that you guys are feeding up. A great team, really smart, high biosecurity, which is impressive because you are foot and mouth endemic here in Indonesia.
Philip
0:21:57
And then from there, we sort of moved over to the chicken farm, sort of rural chicken farm where there's again an acro scheme in place, creating really good value to the lives there and integrated with the community and now we're back at the resort and the guys
Greg
0:22:10
are out on the boat. Don't forget the man that scaled the coconut tree.
Philip
0:22:14
Oh we forgot about that, so that's harvesting the palm sugar. And how tall do you reckon these trees are? Oh that was quite a short tree that he went up, it was only, it would have been 30, 10 meters. 10 at least. I'm sorry he goes taller than that. So this guy climbed up and down the tree like a, not derogatory at all, like a spider monkey. And I tried to climb the tree, I think I got up to the third notch and my toes couldn't handle that. I'm a little bit more weighted than he is. He has 0% body fat. And he just flew up it
Philip
0:22:44
didn't he mate? The way he climbed down with one hand, he climbs those trees all day. So they harvest the palm oil from the top of the tree. Palm sugar. Palm sugar liquid. Yeah palm sugar liquid and they make this, they boil the liquid and they make a sweet treat out of it which is absolutely delicious. If
Philip
0:22:59
you guys see that anywhere, highly highly recommend. Palm sugar, so very famous product that comes out of Asia but to see the guy and then see he hear him how he made it you know he has 58 trees or 59 trees in his plantation or his group of harvesting and he produces 48 kilograms of palm sugar a day. A guy that has been doing it for you know he knew his figures very well, been doing it for three and a half years, makes a good living but it would be a very very tough life. What he does
Philip
0:23:34
is not easy. High risk because there's no safety.
Philip
0:23:37
He climbs 10, 13 meters without a harness or anything like that.
Greg
0:23:40
And he's got a big knife in his back pocket that I'd hate it. What if he ever fell down? That's it.
Greg
0:23:46
It's all over Red River.
Philip
0:23:47
Oh man. So Greg, and then I just wanted to chat to you a little bit about something that's really close to home for me and something we're really trying to share with the global audience in a world and especially in agricultural world where there's a lot of pressure on farmers, Australian farmers in particular, are getting really hit by suicide rates, depression. And something we're trying to bring is resilience and stories of resilience.
Philip
0:24:09
And if anyone stands out and story stands out as yours, I mean, what you managed to do coming from Australia to literally what would be perceived as the middle of nowhere to start an enterprise, a successful enterprise, you'll have some advice to people. Because I doubt very much it all went well all of the time. I'm pretty confident you've had days where you're like, what do we do? What's your sort of advice or take-homes to people who could be sitting at home now struggling,
Philip
0:24:35
it could be recession-based, it could be drought-based, it could be pressure on finances, it could be global markets that feel that it's getting really tough.
Philip
0:24:45
What advice have you got to those guys what they could potentially be going through today? Along 32 years here we've certainly had our ups and downs. We've seen financial crisis, we've seen disease outbreaks, we've seen closure of the trade. We've seen some tough times and financially we've seen some tough times and we've had our fair share of problems with government institutions and stuff in Indonesia which has been very challenging. I am very much the operational person and
Greg
0:25:16
my business partner is the government and finance side but I make the cattle fat and he works out how to finance it, how to run the business within Indonesia. But yeah, resilience it's a very very important talking point. I think the way I attack it and maybe the attack is not the right word, the way I address it is planning. I'm not a great planner but I do try and plan ahead and make sure I have plenty of options when things don't go according to plan. I actually refer to
Greg
0:25:55
myself as pessimist Pankhurst. In a lot of situations where I tour and I spoke at a couple of things last two weeks ago, Australia hosts a big exhibition every three years in Rockhampton, the beef capital of Australia called Beef 2024 and I spoke at a number of events there and usually I always talk about live export because that's what I'm involved in and I think you always have to have a little bit of a
Greg
0:26:29
pessimistic approach to things and so I do have a pessimistic approach to everything but I also have a very positive approach to everything as well. So you've got to look at things from both sides, you've got to plan, you've got to involve as many people and as many good people as you can. My business partner Dickie is very very important in our structure. My wife Rosamund is very very important. I'm very very lucky to still have both parents and
Greg
0:26:58
they're 82-83 and they are very very important too. I sound a lot of stuff off my father and I'm very lucky to be able to spend two or three days a week with my dad in Australia. He looks after a couple of little farms for us in Australia so you know to have an 82 year old father and be able to spend a couple of days a week with him in a non-stressful environment is very good. And my mum as well, she's very important to how we operate things
Philip
0:27:27
as well. But resilience, planning, positive outlook constantly, people.
Philip
0:27:34
Yeah, you said something last night as well, like I asked you a question, I said, what could you tell a 22-year-old Greg, like if you could have a conversation with him today? I don't know if you want to add to that, but I know one thing you did say last night was you would say, identify people that are doing well in something you want to do and speak to them and learn from them. So that was really interesting.
Greg
0:27:57
Yeah, that's very true. Identify those people, speak to them and then find those people that you want to bring along with you for your journey. I think I'm quite good at that and bringing people along on the journey because I'm only 57, I'm not old but I don't want to be doing this for the rest of my life. I want to have a calm down a little bit and you've really got to have the right people with you in your business to be able to bring on the journey and so that
Greg
0:28:24
at some stage they can take over, they can take responsibility. Delegate is also a very very important word.
Philip
0:28:33
Guys are not doing that today in the first world. They're all working on those farms themselves and they're not delegating. They're working in their
Greg
0:28:40
businesses and not on their businesses. You've really got to learn to delegate. If it's only some of the simple stuff but in the initial term but if you've really got to think and think how can I delegate more of this? How can I delegate some stuff so that people are not getting muddy or stressed out? You're not getting too worked over. You've really got to delegate. A lot of the people that you delegate to and especially you've brought them along on the journey
Greg
0:29:06
and you've included them in the business, I also think it's very important to give ownership to people into the business and my business partner says and if we ever do anything we try and include the person in and we maybe give them a share or we give them a share of the profit. Blood money. If you're ever going to do anything you need to be able to say okay we're going to do this business but and if you want to come on the journey but you've got to have wear a bit of pain yourself. Get some skin in the game. Skin in the game, blood money.
Greg
0:29:39
We're getting off resilience there but I know that to give someone some ownership is also a very, very important thing. It's a good incentive.
Philip
0:29:49
All right, that's all we've got time for today but Greg, thank you for taking the time. Thank you for your story. Thank you for hosting us. Thank you for showing us a world I didn't know existed and I'm truly grateful that I speak for the listeners of this. I speak for the scholars that are constantly going to refer to this conversation. It's been a pleasure and a treat and we look forward to the next couple of days and
Philip
0:30:09
hopefully we'll get some more recordings in with some of the scholars for their perceptions too but thank you so much.
Greg
0:30:15
Thank you very much.
Greg
0:30:16
Sampai jumpa. Well, thank you very much and I'll see you again soon. Well, thank you very much and I'll see you again soon.
Philip
0:30:18
.
