Science at start-up speed: FaBA is set to transform Australia’s food and beverage sector

The sector is the largest manufacturing industry in the nation, accounting for 32% of total manufacturing turnover, worth more than $132B and employing more than 270,000 people.

The past three years has highlighted that the Food and Beverage sector is at the heart of some of societies’ greatest global challenges—geo-political tensions, climate change, health and well-being, and economic prosperity.

Yet despite this the Australian Food and Beverage sector is ‘under-cooked’, with various estimates indicating it could be at least two to three times this value.

So what’s holding it back and what needs to be done to redress the situation?

Reflecting on their collective 50+ years in the global Food and Beverage sector, Dr Peter Riddles and Dr Chris Downs are highly optimistic and excited about the future of the sector. Largely due to the launch of Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator—or FaBA—which offers to turn the sector around.

FaBA is a $50M initiative of the federal government’s Trailblazer program, bringing together experts from universities—UniSQ, QUT and UQ including UniQuest—together with industry, to accelerate growth in Australia’s food and beverage sector. An additional $110 million will be invested by industry and research participants to ensure targeted growth of the sector.

“For the past 25 years, I have worked at the cross-roads between universities and industry. The pervasive challenge has been how the two can work differently—better—to leverage the collective expertise, capability and resources for greater impact,” said Dr Riddles, FaBA Chair.

“FaBA has been developed to tackle this head on.”

There is no one, single, silver bullet. Transforming the sector requires a multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary approach from all stakeholders – governments, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers, manufacturers, and business. Working in new ways with new partners, the sector can finally leverage the collective—and until now, disparate—expertise, knowledge, resources and infrastructure to draw upon to solve our problems and co-design the solutions needed to unlock the sector’s potential.

FaBA will accelerate the commercialisation of university research, increase engagement with industry, and deliver value at speed.

FaBA Director, Dr Chris Downs explains: “Together with industry, we have developed a suite of four integrated programs to support our participants at every step of their journey—from ideation, production and business development, launch, and ongoing commercial success.

“The four programs—Innovative Ingredients, Premium Food and Beverage Products, FaBA Training Centre and Innovation Pathways—collectively draw on the latest research, innovations, best practice and commercial insights available from the diverse ‘super-team’ across UQ, UniSQ and QUT, to provide the ultimate innovation and business team mate for FaBA’s partners.

“We will achieve our goals by integrating research, innovation and training—right along our partners’ business journey, wherever they need help.

“Our partners’ success will be FaBA’s success. Across the next five years, FaBA will work with industry to develop 10 new ingredients and 20 products. The goals are ambitious and the timeframe short—but if we are to keep up, let alone grow, Australia’s food and beverage manufacturing, science must work at start-up speed,” he said.