SA Chapter HALL OF FAME

Web: www.nippys.com.au

Alic Knispel was born into a family business with Barossa vineyards, but his father sold out. This left Alic with a yen for self-determination and country life so, after high school in 1933, he moved to Moorook and established a mixed fruit property. He focused on growing and packing oranges, and sold them off the back of his truck at the East End Market. Neighbours approached him to handle their fruit because he was getting better prices than the market wholesalers.

Eventually growers and merchants were at odds with each other and so the Citrus Board was formed and industry rules established – rules that presented a problem to Alic. His ‘juice fruit’ could not be sold to the cooperative, which took fruit from members only. 

Alic and his wife, Lyla, had four sons: John, Jim and twins, Jeff and Bob. John joined the air force, but Jim, at 18, took on the fruit packing business at Moorook.  Jeff and Bob, at 16, were woken early one morning by Alic and introduced to hand-squeezing oranges in the family kitchen before going to school. The juice was sold direct to ‘fruit bar’ outlets in Adelaide.

The Knipsel family twice encountered tragedy when Jim, in 1970, and Bob in 1986, were lost in road accidents. Jeff maintained a passion for the business and in 2008, he and his wife Tina bought out all other family members. Under their second generation leadership, the business is conducted as Nippy’s (fruit juices) at Regency Park, Nippy’s Waikerie Producers (fruit packing) and Knispel Brothers (UHT processing) at Moorook.

Jeff and Tina’s son, Ben, an accountant, is now the financial controller in Adelaide and carries the passion for the business into the third generation. The future presents the challenge of the market shifting from small individual outlets to aggregated businesses and super competitive marketing practices from multinational corporations – but the family has a history of persistence in the face of such pressures.

Nippy’s distributes to supermarkets nationally – the only SA juice producer to do so, and all with South Australian produce.

We welcome Nippy's into the FBA(SA) Hall of Fame in 2009.