AUSTRALIAN value-adding businesses have a new leg-up into domestic and export markets, after funds were made available on July 1 for what is effectively an online dating system for food and agribusiness.
The initiative is the Food and Agribusiness Growth Centre - one of five new or revamped Growth Centres designed to assist Australian businesses in market access and product development.
The first Growth Centre precincts were started under Labor's previous government.
The Coalition version has been provided with $188.5 million (across all five Growth Centres) for four years.
Food and Agribusiness Growth Centre chairman Peter Schutz, Melbourne, said the centres would act as a portal for export-ready businesses to meet potential "suitors" which are ready to do business.
"We have a joke among ourselves that we're like a dating service really," he said.
The Labor government's version, The Food Industry Innovation Precinct, was supposed to include 10 precincts, said Mr Schutz, but only two were launched: Food and Agribusiness as well as Manufacturing.
The Coalition's Growth Centre will be based at Werribee in Victoria.
"What we do is go and negotiate the scope of the project, the cost and then we put in half of it, so we reduce (the business') risk," Mr Schutz said.
The Food and Agribusiness growth Centre - which is delivered by Food Innovation Australia Limited - also helps manage the project with the company and CSIRO.
Its focus will be food and agricultural products where innovation or processing was involved before export, as opposed to a pure commodity, such as grain.
Once a business is assessed as export ready the centre adds it to its e-commerce platform - an online portal - and potential buyers and investors can select which businesses they'd like to meet.
"We look at the people that want to buy and the people that want to sell and we try and match them online," Mr Schutz said.
The first priority, however, for Mr Shutz and his board - including Terry O'Brien (also managing director of Simplot and chairman of Australian Food and Grocery Council), Dr Michele Allen (also chairman of Meat and Livestock Australia and chancellor of Charles Sturt University), Jane Bennett (who started with the family business Ashgrove Cheese in Tasmania and are the ABC and CSIRO board members) and Geoff Starr (company director of Australian Pork Limited and director of Foodbank Australia) - is to develop a 10 year strategy for the food and agribusiness sector.
This will drive all the programs and investment within the Department of Industry and Science.
"If you look at who is managed under the industry and science program it's the CSIRO, the Co-operative Research Centres, Enterprise Infrastructure Program, Chief Scientist - there's a whole range of other activities that now have to align themselves with that strategy we develop."
Each of the five Growth Centres get an equal amount of $3.5 million for administration, plus each centre has access to a fifth of a pool of $66m (called the Growth Centre Innovation Fund) for large scale projects across the four years.
The other four Growth Centres include Advanced Manufacturing, Medical Technologies and Pharmaceuticals, Mining Equipment Technologies and Services, and Oil Gas and Energy Resources.
Market access the priority
NATIVE food producer Sheryl Rennie (pictured), who operates Australian Fingerlime Caviar at Possum Creek on NSW's North Coast, sees a lot of potential in the emerging industry.
However, to grow market access she says better regulation is needed, along with more research. Before any of that can happen a levy system needs to be introduced.
"There needs to be a levy on the fruit so it goes into an account and we can work towards getting grants for our bilateral quarantine agreements," she said.
Ms Rennie's company already exports fruit into Europe, predominantly France and Germany, and potential exists for the US, Japan and New Zealand.
"We have already done the protocol into the EU (with contribution from the NSW Department of Primary Industries)."
However, a levy would generate a pool of funds which could be boosted by government grants, such as those being made available by the Food and Agribusiness Growth Centre.
She said if the industry had been able to access such grants in the past it would have allowed its growers to gain market access much faster.
"The growers have got to the stage now where they've got excess fruit and there's nowhere to sell it," she said.
Market access the main point
NATIVE food producer Sheryl Rennie (pictured), who operates Australian Fingerlime Caviar at Possum Creek on NSW's North Coast, sees a lot of potential in the emerging industry.
However, to grow market access she says better regulation is needed, along with more research. Before any of that can happen a levy system needs to be introduced.
"There needs to be a levy on the fruit so it goes into an account and we can work towards getting grants for our bilateral quarantine agreements," she said.
Ms Rennie's company already exports fruit into Europe, predominantly France and Germany, and potential exists for the US, Japan and New Zealand.
"We have already done the protocol into the EU (with contribution from the NSW Department of Primary Industries)."
However, a levy would generate a pool of funds which could be boosted by government grants, such as those being made available by the Food and Agribusiness Growth Centre.
She said if the industry had been able to access such grants in the past it would have allowed its growers to gain market access much faster.
"The growers have got to the stage now where they've got excess fruit and there's nowhere to sell it," she said.