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Dr Mirjana Prica is the Managing Director of Food Innovation Australia Limited (FIAL), the Food and Agribusiness Growth Centre. She spoke to William Poole. AMT: Firstly, what is FIAL, why was it established, and what are its objectives? Mirjana Prica: Food Innovation Australia Limited (FIAL) is a not-for-profit industry-related organisation that was established under the Department of Industry as part of their innovation agenda through the Industry Growth Centres initiative. We are an industry-led organisation built to consult and deliver to the food and agribusiness sector in Australia.. In terms of our purpose, we were set up to catalyse the growth of the sector globally. It’s really to increase the share of Australian food in the global marketplace. We work across three pillars that we believe are the – excuse the pun – ingredients for success. The first is knowledge. We believe firms need knowledge – not just information, they need knowledge. As part of that knowledge pillar, we do research, we do analysis, we identify opportunities. So in our Project 2030 report - Capturing the Prize - we showed that our sector is currently sitting at $59bn gross value add, roughly 4% of GDP in Australia, but it has scope to be a $200bn sector by 2030. Under that report, there are 19 growth opportunities. What’s really exciting about that report is not only have we identified where the growth is, we’ve also identified what needs to happen. We’ve developed roadmaps for each of those 19 opportunities. We engaged about 100 leaders across the industry, as well as some researchers, and we outlined what needs to happen to unlock that value across each of those 19 opportunities. What’s exciting for us is there’s a pathway forward, it’s about growth, it’s about value-adding. And what’s exciting is, if we champion the initiatives, there are an additional 300,000 jobs to be created across those categories, on top of the 550,000 that we currently have in the sector. So there’s growth, there are jobs, it’s really exciting. What’s also exciting about that piece of work is that when the Prime Minister launched the Modern Manufacturing Strategy last year, the Government identified six priority areas that were of essential importance to the country, and food & beverages was one of those. And the work we’ve done on Project 2030 has been heavily referenced in the roadmap that was developed. So what we’re saying to the industry is: if you’re applying for funding, here’s a valuable source of information you can use to make sure your market data is correct, make sure you’ve identified where the growth opportunities are, and some of the challenges to unlock that. So that’s one of the pillars: knowledge. The second is capabilities. We do a lot around market- and innovation-readiness. We work on transforming businesses, helping them to understand how to innovate. We did a partnership with Mars, called the Seeds of Change Accelerator. We had an expression of interest around the country where we had hundreds of applications. The idea of the program was to get small companies and big companies working together, but also to help small companies, through the resources of Mars, to really access the capability that large corporations have to address inhibiting growth obstacles. Six companies went through the program. One of them, Grounded, makes cheeses from hemp and cauliflower. As a consequence of going through the accelerator, they’re now trading in New York. That’s just one example, and there are others. So we do a lot around market- and innovation-readiness. That’s the second pillar.
AMT DEC 2021
The third pillar is connections. We connect companies to funding and to researchers, because obviously to lock in some of the key potentials, science and technology underpins it, and most businesses don’t have that capability in-house. We do a lot of brokering in terms of connecting businesses to researchers. We also help companies connect to customers in the market. And the last 18 months have been critical with COVID and the inability to travel. We’ve been one of the first in the sector to lead what we call virtual meet-the-buyer events. We’ve connected about 400 Australian export-ready companies to over 500 buyers from about 40 markets. There’s been over 1,000 one-to-one virtual meetings online, and millions of dollars in transactions. It’s a great win-win. What we use to facilitate this connectivity is what we call the Australian Food & Beverage Catalogue. It’s a virtual catalogue online that profiles Australian export-ready companies. And we have hundreds of buyers from about 40 odd markets who can look through that catalogue. That’s the starting point of the engagement. So the three pillars are we work across knowledge, capabilities and connections, and we believe that’s the key to success in getting companies to catalyse their business growth. AMT: How has COVID-19 impacted the sector? What have been the big lessons from the pandemic as well? MP: I think the big lessons from the pandemic have been that you need to always have a backup plan, particularly in terms of raw material supply. A lot of the micro-ingredients that go into making foods come from overseas and therefore if there’s a disruption in terms of shipping, as there has been, you need alternative sources of supply. That’s caused a real problem for the industry – access to the right ingredients to be able to manufacture. Most of what we grow and produce is actually exported, but we still need some ingredients to come in, because we don’t have the economies of scale to produce them in Australia. We don’t have the volumes, labour’s expensive, electricity is expensive. You need to be able to compete on a global scale if you’re going to manufacture. So I think the first lesson is about procurement, and ingredients. Secondly, think about your customer base and market diversification. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s sort of all business sense, business smarts – there are some things you just don’t do. A smart business person would have a diversified market and be spreading their profile and exposure. And I think the third lesson is to just be open and not so rigid. Be agile. The shocks that the food and agribusiness sector experiences… we had the bushfires, we’ve had drought, we had mouse plagues, we’ve had geopolitical tensions that have caused ripples of anxiety across the industry. And then we’ve had COVID. So there really is no normal. They say we’re going to get back to business as usual, but the norm is that there is constant change. So businesses that build systems and processes that mean they can respond to these shocks and pivot quickly, they’re the ones that have succeeded. AMT: It seems like a sector where resilience is incredibly important. MP: Yes, and these businesses are quite resilient. You know, prior to COVID the sector was $61bn, and last year we hit $59bn. And that could be also cyclical because it relates to seasonal things that are beyond your control. So the sector is quite resilient,
