Mr Mark Webster
Mark Webster has had more than 18 years experience in the abalone industry, having started in NSW in 1990.
Mark originally became involved in the industry by accident. He managed his own building company and, as a hobby, experimented with breeding corals. Mark was passionate about salt water aquariums and coral, however he soon discovered there was a need for better filtration to ensure the water quality was as good as, or better than, the water on the Great Barrier Reef, off the Queensland coast. After several years of experimenting, designing, building and rebuilding filtration equipment, including ozone, UV and computer controlling equipment, he had a neat, compact and reliable system. At this time, Mark was approached by his neighbour to join their abalone company and to rebuild their tanks and manage the factory. It was easy to up-scale the lessons learnt over the previous years to systems over 50,000 litres each. After five years the company had expanded and also purchased an abalone cannery in Tasmania. Mark and his family moved to Tasmania in 2000 to manage the company and expand the business. The business was expanded to increase live exports, and new products were added including retort pouches and rumbled, frozen and chilled meat. Mark then moved into the aquaculture side for a few years, growing and processing mussels, scallops and abalone for the domestic market and for export.
Mark Webster and Ralph Caccavo joined together in 2007 and set about upgrading the tanking facilities, and lifting the standards, to make Ralph’s Tasmanian Seafood number one for volume and, more importantly, for quality. The decision was made to build a new processing factory next to the live holding factory and this was completed in July 2008.
Mark is driven by success and despises failure. Mark is passionate about quality and continually questions everything the factories do to look for improvements in quality and processes.