About Bega Cheese

A true Australian icon, the Bega Co-operative Creamery Company was established in 1899, with the original Bega Cheese factory at Lagoon Street, Bega opening in 1900.

Today, with sites spread from Bega, to Melbourne and Northern Victoria, Bega Cheese employs over 1,700 people. The company has evolved from its modest and localised co-operative heritage in Bega into a significant and innovative player in the Australian and international dairy industry. The Company’s production of approximately 200,000 tonnes of dairy products equates to a sales turnover in excess of $1 billion per annum, the #1 Cheddar brand in Australia.

Farm Sustainability

Farm Sustainability

Bega Cheese is committed to supporting sustainable and productive dairy farms. They actively work with their suppliers to help them identify and adopt practices on farm that enhance the efficiency, productivity and long term sustainability of their business.

For the last 10 years they have been implementing their on farm Bega Environmental Management System (BEMS). The program has been extremely successful in identifying and addressing key sustainability issues affecting their suppliers.  BEMS is a voluntary program that has been used as the foundation of Bega’s Sustainability and Milk Growth Program.

Factory Sustainability

Factory Sustainability

Bega Cheese Group operates over six manufacturing sites in Australia.  Four sites are in Victoria and two sites are located in Bega, New South Wales.  All facilities operate environmental programs that monitor sustainable environmental performance. These programs cover Energy, Carbon, Water, Air, Resource Management, Waste, Soil Management, Noise and Odour.

Bega Cheese facilities operate under licence granted by the New South Wales and Victorian Environmental Protection Agencies. The site environment management systems vary in focus, it is based on each facility’s most significant environmental risk and sustainability concerns.

The Bega Cheese Group monitors and reports on key performance indicators relating to energy and water consumption, carbon, quantity & quality of wastewater as well as solid waste and recycling.  Sites with factory water reuse programs also monitor the environmental impact of reuse water on the irrigation areas.

Energy Savings

Bega Cheese has implemented a variety of energy saving schemes across the Group that covers areas such as; compressed air, heating, refrigeration, lighting and steam systems. Some of the projects implemented have been with the assistance of State or Federal Government funding and have also improved internal knowledge systems via training in addition to the primary energy saving benefits. Bega Cheese has improved its overall production efficiency and energy efficiency by focusing on overall equipment effectiveness. Bega Cheese’s energy and carbon management strategy provides further improvements through its use of Key Performance Indicators such as energy use per tonne of product. Bega Cheese is committed to reducing its energy intensity.

LED Lighting

The 24/7 Derrimut warehouse facility has ~130 lights, which used inefficient metal halide technology. Additionally, these lights generated heat, and required regular maintenance, so upgrading to LED lighting delivers multiple benefits in this food storage environment. LEDified’s LED upgrade ensured higher lux levels throughout the facility (meeting AS/NZS 1680 lighting standards), and will reduce lighting costs by >$40,000 per year.

View Installed Products

SOLAS LED Highbay

BRAVO LED Batten

PETRA LED Panel