Raised on his family’s Collarenebri (NSW) property, ‘Mogil Mogil’ and later at ‘Abedoar’ at Mungindi,
Ben Copeman has spent more than 30 years experiencing the extremes of rural life, breeding stud and
commercial beef cattle, sheep, wool and growing cereal and forage crops across north western NSW and
central and southern QLD. Leaving the land in the mid-1990s, Ben pursued further education in order
to transition into a life post ‘hands on’ farming.
This lead to a career in rural business consulting, followed by senior management positions in small
scale investment banking, risk management and environmentalConservation. 2013 saw Ben return to his
sustainable agricultural roots as General Manager of NASAA Organic, Australia’s oldest organic certification
organisation. While at NASAA, Ben was awarded the Australia China Business Council’s Industry Leader
of the Year Award for creative, innovative and outstanding leadership in developing the trade of organic
products between Australia and China.Following a brief stint In Canberra as CEO of the Royal Canberra
Show and then as CEO of Australian Certified Organic, Ben and Matt Bird, decided to launch their
own organic & sustainable agricultural certification company, Southern Cross Certified Australia.
Living in Nundah, a suburb of Brisbane, his vision is to leverage Australia’s reputation for high
quality, green, clean and safe conventional produce to open export markets for even cleaner,
even greener and even safer certified organic or sustainably produced products.
Matt Bird, Certification and Audit Manager
Born and bred in Brisbane, Matt is a product certification and auditing professional with nearly ten years’
experience in the forestry sector in Australia, New Zealand, PNG, Fiji and Japan. During the time in this sector
he developed a passion for helping people achieve and maintain certification. Most recently, he was the
Certification Manager at Australian Certified Organic where it became obvious just how important it is to
make the certification journey efficient, cost effective and most importantly, simple.
This was the driver (along with Ben's inspiring vision for sustainably produced products) that led Matt and Ben
to launch Southern Cross Certified Australia. With Matt's passion for helping clients achieve certification and Ben's vision,
Southern Cross Certified Australia will be the certifier of choice for sustainably produced products in Australia.