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Cereal is serious business

12 September 2007

Monash graduate Carolyn Creswell has been named the 2007 Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur Of The Year for her range of healthy breakfast cereals.

Monash graduate Carolyn Creswell (BA 1995) has been named the 2007 Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur Of The Year (Southern Region Youth Category).

The Carman's Fine Foods founder and Managing Director won the prestigious award ahead of 16 finalists from Victoria and Tasmania.

When Cresswell was an 18 year old student at Monash, she was working part time at a bakery where she would toast muesli and sell it to local cafés and food stores. The owners told Carolyn she would soon lose her job as they couldn't sell the business so Carolyn bought it for $1,000.

Fifteen years on, Cresswell has single-handedly covered off the Australian cereal market, with Carman's now stocked in both Coles and Woolworths supermarkets, Myer, David Jones and leading independent health stores.

Cresswell is now concentrating on developing the business globally, having recently expanded into NTUC Fairprice in Singapore and Sainsbury's supermarkets in the UK.

"It's fair to say that when I took on my business I didn't know much about running a company. There were a lot of steep learning curves along the way, but I believed in the product and the people I worked with and knew that if I put my mind to it I could achieve anything," says Cresswell.

Cresswell also makes sure she runs her business as ethically as possible; for example she refuses to import oats for her muesli products, despite the high drought-related prices for Australian oats, choosing instead to support the struggling Aussie farmers. The company is also a carbon neutral company which uses mainly renewable energy, and has supported more than 20 charities in the past six months alone.

Cresswell lives in Hawthorn with her husband Peter and their two children William and Lily.