A 90-year-old Australian ice cream producer has scooped a new business opportunity out of China's 1000-year love of green tea.
Golden North began making ice cream in 1923, but when it struck financial trouble in 2010 five South Australian families banded together to buy the business.
Marketing and export director Trevor Pomery has found a niche in the Chinese market which is about to deliver jobs for the small regional town of Laura in the state's mid-north.
"We'd all been involved in the company and ... had faith in the future of the company," Mr Pomery said.
After a visit to China, Mr Pomery returned to Australia and worked with Golden North's flavour developer to come up with new green tea ice cream flavours.
Austrade helped him find first-year international students from Adelaide six months ago to taste-test a short-list of four flavours of the product.
"They loved it," Mr Pomery told AAP on Thursday.
The students rated the ice cream on the basis of flavour, texture, colour and other categories.
Ironically, the winning flavour was a Japanese "matcha" tea.
The first shipments are due to be exported in January.
Golden North, which employs 65 people in the small country town of 550 residents, is also air freighting 4000 litres of fresh milk to China.
Mr Pomery says the China-Australia free trade agreement has assisted the company.
"There's obviously tariffs when you go into a country, and part of the free trade agreement is the decrease in the tariffs," he said.
"So what it does is make our product more competitive with the locally produced product."
