Dairy Science Award

Geoff Boxsell Winner 2025 Dairy Research Foundation Dairy Science Award

I begin by acknowledging the Wodi Wodi people, the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are gathered.

Tonight, we recognise the remarkable contribution of Geoff Boxsell.

Geoff grew up fifty metres from the Jamberoo Co op Dairy Factory. His father, Wallace, was the manager, and the factory became his playground long before it became his life’s work. Every spare hour outside school was spent inside that building, watching, learning, absorbing.

By the time Geoff finished school, he already understood the rhythm of a dairy factory better than most adults working in one.

He formalised all of that early knowledge at Hawkesbury Agricultural College. He graduated with a Diploma in Dairy Technology in 1958

He was Dux, he was the best practical student, and he collected Blues in both athletics and cricket while he was there.

The combination was classic Geoff. Intellect, curiosity, and a sporting life that never seemed to slow.

He could open the batting in Sydney first grade cricket, score 200 on the SCG, represent NSW and then line up in Rugby for Illawarra at Country Week, and still find time to take up skiing if it helped him impress the girl who would become the love of his life.

When he returned to Jamberoo in 1959, he applied that same drive to the factory floor. By 1970, when his father retired, Geoff stepped into the manager’s role with a clear view of what the factory needed to survive and thrive.

He did not invent the milk quota system at Jamberoo, but he inherited a pioneering framework introduced by his father and the Jamberoo Factory Board.

Geoff refined it, strengthened it, and ensured the factory could rely on a stable, year-round milk supply that protected the production of their premium quality sweetened condensed milk.

It was clever, it was forward thinking, and it became a model adopted across the state.

Jamberoo was never a big factory, so it had to be smarter than the big ones. Geoff made that its advantage. He sourced a German evaporator sight unseen for what was then a fortune. It arrived in a million pieces. He and his team put it together and turned condensed milk into a showpiece product that met exacting standards for export to Japan and Korea.

These achievements were never solo efforts. Geoff worked alongside people he admired and trusted. His head laboratory technician Kevin Richardson was one of them, especially in the butter room.

Every churn of butter was graded by the Department of Agriculture, and for fifteen years Jamberoo topped the state. One hundred percent choice. True to label. It was unheard of.

Then came 1976. A bulk box of Jamberoo butter became the Supreme Champion dairy product in Australia. It beat cheese, milk powder, ice cream and yoghurt from the largest factories in the country. For a tiny village, that was a moment of enormous pride.

Geoff had studied cultured cream techniques in New Zealand during a scholarship, and he brought that knowledge home. He trialled souring cream with probiotics, neutralising the acidity, pasteurising with precision, and producing butter with depth and flavour that set an international standard.

And then there was the most rebellious innovation of all, born in the era when margarine was treated as the enemy of dairy.

While margarine companies rolled out Mrs Jones, the fictional housewife who claimed Australians deserved choice, Geoff and Kevin quietly made a different kind of choice available.

They blended cultured cream with sunflower and safflower oils and created a spread that local farmers loved straight from the fridge. They packaged it in tubs and handed it out quietly.

Then they became cheeky. They sent a sample to the Minister for Agriculture. The response from the state dairy division came swiftly. Pull your heads in or we will revoke your dairy licence.

Because they were not allowed to call it butter, they called it Stuff, and Stuff became part of local Jamberoo folklore.

Official production stopped. But locally? The product lived on.

Tubs of the spreadable butter circulated quietly among South Coast farmers, a kind of “black market” dairy delicacy that spread like a dream straight from the fridge.

Eighteen months later, with consumer demand growing, it re-emerged under commercial branding. Today, spreadable butter is a household staple. Back then, it started in a small factory in Jamberoo.

And somewhere in a Paris kitchen, Julia Child would be shaking her head, saying her only regret in life was that Geoff and Kevin never sent her a sample of their Stuff. After all, as she liked to remind the world,

with enough butter anything is good.

Quality was everything to Geoff. He expected it from himself, he expected it from his staff, and he expected it from suppliers.

There is a story told locally about a farmer well known for cutting corners. When Geoff questioned the cleanliness of his milk, the farmer took offence. He drove down Jamberoo main street one afternoon, saw Geoff crossing the road, and threatened to run him over. Geoff did not move. He said, Thank you for the warning, and kept walking. That was Geoff under pressure. Calm and unshakeable.

His leadership continued as the industry consolidated. Jamberoo merged with Nowra to form the Shoalhaven Dairy CO_OP. Later the Shoalhaven, Canberra, Wollongong and Moss Vale factories all sat under Geoff’s oversight. His focus never changed. Quality, fairness, community, and a future that made sense for farmers.

There are political stories too. When the new state of the art Bombaderry factory opened, our federal MP, Colin Hollis, said he was very excited. He asked Geoff about opportunities to diversify. Geoff gave him a stare and reminded him that quality was the priority.

Years later, when Wharfies went on strike and delayed exports to Japan and Korea, Geoff rang Colin and asked him to fix it. Colin said he smiled and said to Geoff I told you, you should diversify.

However, he knew Geoff Boxsell was not a man to mess with and those containers left the docks soon after.

Beyond the factory, Geoff gave his time to everything that mattered in Jamberoo. He helped found the Jamberoo Golf Club and helped write the first constitution in NSW that made no distinction between male and female members. That was long before gender equality became standard practice. Jamberoo became the first golf club to have a female president.  Geoff tells me “it wasn’t activism it was common sense.”

He sang in a quartet for more than sixty years. He played the ukulele. He served the church. He served the Jamberoo Valley Ratepayers and Residents Association. He supported floodplain management work on the Terragong Swamp. He contributed to community groups across the region.  You can see why he was named Kiama Citizen of the Year in 2016

He retired in 2001 as joint company secretary of Australian Cooperative Foods, but he never retired from contributing.

Tonight’s award honours dairy science, but it also honours leadership, integrity and a lifetime of innovation that has shaped the industry we all work in.

Geoff is also a well know ditty writer He performs those ditties with a ukulele. I don’t have a ukulele, but I do have a ditty. This one is for you Geoff.

**They say a valley keeps its heroes
in places most folk overlook,
in a churn, in a lab, in a quiet man’s hands,
not in speeches or in books.

They say a scholar crossed the Tasman,
came home with a scientist’s eye,
turned sugar, cream and culture
into butter you couldn’t deny.

He stirred up the Jamberoo factory,
no fuss, no chase for applause,
proved science lives in a dairy
as much as in lecture halls.

Fifteen years of “Choicest” butter,
not once did the graders frown,
and one bright year that champion box
made the whole valley proud.

He tinkered with spreads before their time,
(sent samples to ministers too),
got told to “pull his head in”
but kept thinking the way thinkers do.

So raise a glass for the scientist
whose footprints shaped this land,
for the butter he made, the people he taught,
and the work done by his hand.

The valley keeps its legends,
some sung and some held in trust
and if you ask who earned their place,
Jamberoo answers: “Geoff Boxsell.
Honourable. Clever. Just.”**

Geoff, you have been a trailblazer. You have been generous with your knowledge, bold in your thinking, loyal to your community, and determined to leave the industry better than you found it.

On behalf of the Dairy Research Foundation, number8bio and everyone in this room, congratulations on receiving the 2025 Dairy Science Award. It is thoroughly deserved.