Maximum Yield Australia/New Zealand 2020 September/October | Page 41

“
From those early years in the 90s, our business
shifted from equipment and fertilisers to just focusing
on manufacturing the best fertilisers that years
of hands-on research could produce.”
How did you become involved
in the hydroponic Industry?
You have to go right back to the 1950s,
I was growing up in suburban Sydney,
times were hard, wages were around
($9) a week, however, manufacturing
industries were booming. In the street
where I lived, half was taken up with
industry of all types. My dad worked for
Bentleys Hemp Rope & Twine Mills.
With wages being low, just about
every suburban backyard had a veggie
garden and, as the only boy in the
family, I had the job of looking after the
garden. I was never keen on school, but
I loved gardening, watering, weeding,
and learning how to feed my garden
with organic materials like chook and
horse shit and good old garden lime to
balance the pH.
Having had numerous jobs
throughout the years from packing
shelves in a supermarket to the board
rooms of major transport companies,
in 1989 fate took a turn with the airline
industry going on strike for the best
part of a year, and I found myself out of
work and broke.
Throughout those years I always had
a couple of my favourite flowering
plants growing; it had become a
passion and obsession. I remember
December 24, 1989, as if it were
yesterday. I was sitting in a pub with
an old mate making plans for the new
year, when he passed me an advert
for a growing chamber, the famous
Phototron, by Julien D DeMarco. It was
just one of those moments of inspiration.
In January of 1990 I picked up my first
Phototron from a Sydney warehouse
(mine was one of four). In March I went
back to pick up a second unit, and
there in that same warehouse were
hundreds of Phototrons waiting to be
delivered all around Australia. I was
hooked — this is the industry for me.
How was the Ozi Magic
range of products started?
There wasn’t much of a hydroponic
industry at the time, but in the next
seven years it went from a few
hydroponic business to hundreds
around Australia. I started Hydraspher
Technologies in 1990 with its own
version of the Phototron and a small
range of fertilisers. From those early
years in the 90s, our business shifted
from equipment and fertilisers to
just focusing on manufacturing the
best fertilisers that years of hands-on
research could produce, and the Ozi
Magic range of products was born.
Maximum Yield 41