In 2025, Baiada ranked as the fifth-largest food company in Australia and was the only one of the top five to be Australian-owned. Yet the name remained virtually unknown to most Australians. Their chicken brands, Lilydale and Steggles, were much more familiar.

The company, rather speciously, traces its history back to 1916 when the founder, Celestino (later Charlie) Baiada arrived from Malta as a teenager. Initially working as a kitchen hand and a waiter, he later worked on his father’s farm at Pendle Hill in Sydney’s west. He then went into partnership on a property in the district, carting eggs and vegetables to the markets in Sydney.

According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Baiada raised the money for his next property by persuading a merchant to sell him £1500 worth of wheat on credit. He then did the rounds of local poultry farmers, selling the grain at a profit, repaying the loan and financing his property. Property trading became an important wealth builder for Baiada, and the company still has a property division named after him: Celestino.

Although Baiada was described as a poultry farmer as early as 1928, it seems his emphasis was more on vegetable production. During World War II, he had a contract to supply fruit and vegetables, chiefly potatoes and onions, to the armed forces. He was also a leading figure within the local Maltese community and, through the war years, president of the Malta Relief Fund.

It was after the war that Baiada began to process poultry, initially in the family laundry. His business expanded rapidly through the 1950s and, in 1963, his operation became a company, Baiada Pty Limited. A new processing plant was established in Tamworth, northern New South Wales in 1966. Initially, the products carried the Baiada brand, with steaming hens and boiling hens advertised by supermarkets during the mid-1970s. Adding to the range, frozen chickens appeared in the 1980s.

Since Charlie Baiada’s death in 1983, the company has been owned by the family of his son-in-law, Frank Camilleri. Expansion has continued, with the Lilydale Free Range brand launched in 2002 and the acquisition of Steggles in 2010. These two brands are now the public face of the company, although its operations are much more diverse, including processing facilities, water treatment and biogas systems, farms, and feed mills.

Chicken is big business in Australia. According to the Australian Chicken Meat Federation, in 2023-24, Aussies were each eating approximately 50 kg of chicken per year, making it by far the most popular source of animal protein. Between them, Baiada and its main competitor, Inghams, produce around 70 per cent of the 1.5 billion kilograms we scoff annually.