Golden North begins production at Murray Bridge, 20 jobs added

South Australian ice cream maker Golden North has begun production at its new Murray Bridge plant, the ABC confirmed on 21 October 2026, ending the company’s 103-year run in the Mid North town of Laura. The move follows Golden North’s purchase last year of the former Beston Global Food Company plant at Murray Bridge, a site administrators could not sell to another buyer when Beston was liquidated in 2025.

Why it matters

For operators watching regional industrial stock, this is a live example of a liquidated food-processing asset being brought back into production rather than sitting idle or being broken up for parts. Golden North managing director and co-owner Dimi Kyriazis said of the move into a larger, more diverse site: “There are opportunities everywhere … we just could never take advantage of them before.” The company is carrying over its existing recipes and equipment from Laura, and head of operations Paul Connelly, a former Beston employee, said the recipes themselves stayed with the Murray Bridge factory rather than being sold off separately when Beston was liquidated.

The relocation also reshapes the labour picture in two regional towns at once. Golden North was Laura’s largest employer, and the ABC reported the departure leaves a gap in a town where the company has operated for just over a century. At Murray Bridge, only three staff from Laura took up the offer to relocate, meaning most of the new roles are being filled locally, including some former Beston workers. For developers and operators assessing industrial or food-processing sites in regional South Australia, the episode shows a distressed asset finding a buyer willing to retool and restaff it rather than demolish or subdivide, a different outcome to the warehouse and logistics conversions more commonly seen on ex-industrial sites closer to Adelaide.

The numbers

The Murray Bridge site needs about 20 more staff than the Laura factory required, taking Golden North’s total workforce to roughly 100 people, according to the ABC’s reporting. The South Australian Government contributed $1m to support the transition from Laura to Murray Bridge, the figure the ABC attributed to the state’s assistance package for the move. Golden North has told the ABC that about one-third of its production stays within South Australia, with the remainder sold interstate and overseas, though the outlet did not report a specific production volume or capacity figure for the new site. No purchase price for the former Beston plant was disclosed in the ABC’s report, and this desk has not located a separate figure to verify.

What’s next

The near-term test for Murray Bridge is staffing the balance of the roughly 20 new positions and settling the plant’s milk supply, which Golden North has sourced from another processor for its first year of operation rather than its usual local arrangements. Kyriazis told the ABC the company plans to add cheese production at the site in addition to ice cream, a second product line that would extend the site’s output mix beyond what the Laura factory produced. Connelly said the team has already done work on faster-maturing parmesan recipes ahead of that expansion, a signal the cheese line is further along than a bare announcement.

For Laura, the practical question is what replaces Golden North as the town’s largest employer, since the ABC’s report frames the company’s exit as leaving a significant gap locally. For Murray Bridge and the wider Beston liquidation, the Golden North move is one of the clearer reuses of the liquidated group’s former assets to date, and operators tracking similar distressed food-processing sites elsewhere in South Australia now have a concrete comparison point, tracked on our Adelaide market page, for how quickly a new owner can restart production once the site, recipes and workforce are lined up.