Murray Now

As a child, Dean Druce was brought up learning the family business of wheat, chocolate and liquorice in the small town of Junee, NSW. Dean and his two siblings are testament to a family tradition that continues to grow with the business setting up in Corowa in an abandoned flour mill.

With knowledge and determination, Corowa Chocolate Factory recently received an award for ‘Best New Attraction’ at the NSW Inland Tourism Awards held in Balranald last month. While its predecessor Junee Liquorice & Chocolate Factory took out the award for ‘Best Tourism Attraction’, beating the well known Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo.

The history behind the creation of Corowa Chocolate Factory began with its parent business Junee Liquorice and Chocolate. It too, was an old abandoned flour mill, purchased in 1962. With an excess of flour, a suggestion to turn the flour into liquorice started as a profound idea; then with a little more research it was discovered that liquorice was made up of 35% flour, so the Druce’s decided to give it a go.

Creating a strong tourist attraction and profitable business is the ultimate goal for Corowa Chocolate Factory and the Junee operation is a fantastic model to base this on. “In 2003, Junee went from having 4,000 tourists a year, to over 96,000 tourists in 2010” Dean said. “We envisage Corowa becoming a centre producing a lot more product than even Junee and this could happen very easily. For example we have a distributor wanting 2 tonne of honeycomb per week with chocolate on top of that”.

Only a reasonably new business, Dean has demonstrated that he will be in for the long haul in Corowa; and the Corowa Council have assisted in a big way. With the heritage listed flour mill idle for 30 years, Corowa Council agreed to sell the mill for $1 on the premise it was restored to its former glory. Dean says that, “It was a great story about a heritage listed flour mill and created huge media attention to Corowa and the region for many weeks afterwards.”

In terms of the future of Corowa Chocolate Factory; “We still have a lot of planning to do in order to move forward. The possibilities of this site are endless and we can see this venture contributing to Corowa’s economic viability. The Corowa Chocolate factory is being planned in stages and this is a deliberate marketing activity to show people the natural progression and encourage repeat business. We also have plans to have a restaurant attached to the chocolate factory in the near future” Dean states.

The next big thing for Corowa Chocolate Factory will be the introduction of a whisky distillery. While earmarked for October last year there has been much progress behind the scenes. Dean states “there are many requirements, safety procedures and council restrictions put in place which must be adhered to. For example we need to raise enough capital for an extensive fire safety system before we can get into the next phase of production.”

“The whisky could possibly be an export market in the future but we would need to be making an awful lot to make it viable. Whisky is the type of product that has a huge outlay for equipment and the product sits in a barrel for 5 or 10 years before you see any return, but we certainly will not rule it out” Dean continues.

Next time you are driving through Corowa, be sure to stop and visit the Corowa Chocolate Factory and be on the lookout for the ‘Freckle Festival’ during the school holidays! With jumping castles, slides, face painting and a petting zoo!

For more information click here.