The simple formula the king of branded Australian beef, Cape Grim, was built on

The family-owned Greenham, which started with a butcher shop in Melbourne's inner west more than 150 years ago and today runs three export-accredited processing plants in Victoria and Tasmania, has brands found on menus across the globe.

Cape Grim, its world-renowned premium grassfed label, is credited with blazing new trails in the branded beef space for Australia,

Peter Greenham spoke at a Meat & Livestock seminar at Beef Australia this year on what the beef consumer wants today, and what they are willing to pay a premium for.

What consumers want constantly evolves, he said.

As a brand owner, you must be always seeking out the next thing the consumer will be chasing, not just in the next few months but five years out.

"Essentially, you are wanting to have customers wedded to your claims which puts you in a position to grow with those people," Mr Greenham said.

The evolution of Cape Grim was based on that simple, but powerful, formula.

Victorian sixth-generation meat processors and exporters, the Greenham family, acquired the Tasmanian Smithton abattoir in 2001.

At the time, high-end beef brands were few and far between.

"We saw there was a massive hole for a premium grassfed product. Restaurants were branding grainfed product but not grassfed," Mr Greenham said.

"We knew the first thing the customer wanted was a good eating experience. We brought on MSA (Meat Standards Australia) but then graded to an even higher level.

"We selected on marbling and higher-end quality, knowing if we had a premium product people would remember the experience and go back and ask for it again."

Cape Grim was launched in 2007 - a restaurant-grade exclusively grassfed product with a unique taste that was unavailable in major supermarkets at the time. With its beef sourced from cattle farmers throughout Tasmania, King Island and Flinders Island, it has been called a benchmark brand.

It made an immediate mark on the Australian culinary scene and that quickly spread to international interest.

"We also realised very early that we couldn't just sell a loin cut or we wouldn't be viable," Mr Greenham said.

"So we looked around at different primals and secondary cuts. We did some deals in Korea with chucks and then we looked to the US.

"At the time, they were big into feeding their cattle grain, HGPs (hormone growth promotants) and antibiotics. We realised we could offer the opposite of that, and with a good eating experience and done efficiently, it would be a success.

"So we tested the US market and talked to some big customers about exactly what they wanted and came up with a suite of claims."

The next evolution was the demand for third party auditing.

"Customers started to say 'instead of just telling us, we need verification', so we did that," Mr Greenham said.

"We started with 500 to 600 producers and built that out to around 1000, all third party audited."

Animal welfare became the next big thing, he said.

"There were no real certifications in Australia so we went to Certified Humane in the US and that allowed for another claim for our brand," he said.

Greenham's set up the lifetime-traceable Never Ever program for its supplies, which gives consumers assurance that all animals are 100 per cent grassfed, have been given no added hormones, are antibiotic free, free range, free from genetically modified organisms, Meat Standards Australia eligible and Certified Humane.

And today, Cape Grim customers are saying they want guarantees on environmental protection as well.

"They are asking 'what are you doing with your rivers, your grasses, your soils'," Mr Greenham said.

So a sustainability standard has been built into the Never Ever program.

Cape Grim today is supplied to customers throughout Australia and as far afield as Japan, Korea, Thailand, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, Nepal, South Africa, Seychelles, the US and the Maldives.