Owners
John Kelly
A visionary creative who rarely thinks inside the box! Determined and persistent, John has “zero quit”. A Rural Scientist with a meat science flair. Abhors waste.
Katrina Kelly
Agricultural Scientist by training but an animal loving environmentalist at heart. As a child wanted to be Dr. Dolittle and talk with animals.
Sally Bruen
Tasmanian born and bred, Melbourne based entrepreneurial community development and marketing specialist.
Our people
Lenah would be nothing without our wonderful team of staff. They are highly skilled artisans. Training is critical. On employment, all processing staff are enrolled in Cert II Meat Processing at TasTAFE with 50% going on to complete Cert III or higher, trained to the Inspector level. This is 3 times the national meat industry average. Consequently, Lenah has an Inspector at all parts of the processing chain, ensuring consistently high quality products.
Our harvesters
All animals processed by Lenah are supplied by trained and accredited harvesters. Harvesters must have completed the TAFE “Game Harvesters Skill Set” course AMPSS00018 and been assessed in the field for competency by government inspectors.
All animals supplied must be brain shot using approved calibre rifles. Dispatch is instant. There is no herding, driving, transporting or stunning in an abattoir. In terms of animal welfare, the harvest is worlds best practice.
Lenah would be nothing without our professional, highly skilled Harvesters.
Our inspiration, Dick Lawrence
We would like to honour a gentleman that was part of the inspiration behind Lenah. Mr Dick Lawrence.
Dick Lawrence was a creative and forward-thinking farmer, based at Cressy, Northern Tasmania. John first met Dick when he was working with the Department of Agriculture. Dick was one of Johns farming clients. Dick was keen to investigate the potential for a business based on processing Tasmanian possum and shared these ideas with John. At the time John and Sally were participants in a business development training program called The Enterprise Workshop. John and Sally formed a working group with some other participants, producing a feasibility study on Dicks concept as well as Tasmanian wallaby. At the time the Department of Agriculture was restructuring and John didn’t like the office-bound direction it was heading, so he put up his hand for a redundancy. Together John and Sally set up Lenah and the rest, as they say, is history.
Lenah and the Vatican
Cards on the table: John is an RC — a retired Catholic, not a Roman Catholic. Raised in a very Catholic family, he knows his way around the faith, even if he no longer practises it.
Lenah has accumulated more than a few unusual claims to fame over the years. We export possum products to New Zealand (which John insists qualifies him as the world’s greatest marketer). At one point, we were the world’s largest trader in crocodile meat, and we even opened a trade route moving sea-container loads of ostrich gizzards from South Africa to China.
But one story stands apart — a little more… sanctimonious.
The Vatican has a long-standing tradition of binding its archival records exclusively in deer leather. And yes, you guessed it: for a time, Lenah supplied the raw skins that were tanned for the Vatican’s bookbinders.
John likes to believe this contribution might absolve him of his many sins on Judgment Day. Whether St Peter agrees remains to be seen.
