Summary
Areas covered:
Innovation Insights (previously Red Meat Innovation Hub)
Projects A.CIS.0039, A.CIS.0043, A.CIS.0045, A.RMH.001-004 developed an Agri-food Innovation Hub for the red meat industry that was to deliver a transformational outcome based on customer and market-focused innovation and building capability throughout the value chain.
While the initial focus of the Hub was to be on new product development and value-adding, it was to ultimately extend to other areas of innovation capability, including developing a knowledge centre and portal.
Based on industry feedback, the original Innovation Hub approach has now been modified and repositioned as 'Innovation Insights'.
Innovation support activities
Project A.MPM.0025 aimed to identify opportunities for increasing the use of red meat as the protein source in the airline catering sector.
MLA developed two value added products, dual ovenable (microwavable) lamb and corned brisket for sandwich use, capable of increasing carcase value by addressing consumer needs for convenient enjoyable meat products and processor needs to find alternative uses for secondary cuts. Project A.MPM.0027 provided firm consumer preference data to underpin the development of the business cases for these products in order to facilitate commercial uptake of these opportunities.
An overview of IP / technology scanning for the Australian Food Industry is an important function of MLA’s Red Meat Innovation Service Hub to determine what and where innovation activity is occurring in Australia and provide guidance around research providers the Hub should engage with. Under project A.MPM.0028, analytics were completed by MicroPatent LLC, a Thomson Reuters business, to determine trends and assignees across food science, nutraceuticals, processing, packaging and production, science and patented innovation IT, business models, software and value chain innovations related to the Australian food industry.
Impingement ovens are commonly used for cooking pizzas in Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) and Hotel Restaurant and Cafes (HORECA) outlets. However, increased applications in deserts and side dishes have seen foodservice operators expand the oven’s use. With the impingement oven typically operating at dry, high temperatures at set belt speeds, proof of concept “steak” products will consider combination(s) of pre-packaging technologies (e.g. moisture infusion, shaping/forming, par-cooking, high pressure processing) along with meat cut selection. Project A.MPM.0033 scoped potential target markets who do not currently use impingement ovens for centre of plate red meat and present indicative costs and processes for the proof of concept products. Project P.PSH.0693 analyse big data for the purpose of identifying agrifood opportunities for designing food products for healthy ageing. This project allowed the meat industry to evaluate the effectiveness of data analytic tools to identify trends and opportunities.
Project A.MPM.0037 was to help identify growth opportunities for value added red meat and produce some proof of concept product development for the Retail and Food Service Industries.
A.RMH.0020 looks at an ageing population and the impacts on the grocery market. Nielsen have forecast that the majority of growth in food grocery over the next 5 years will come from satisfying the needs of seniors. Defining foresight themes enable us to anticipate how seniors' demands and expectations will manifest themselves. They will likely demand products designed for their unique requirements, as against compromising with family based, or single young adult offerings.
Project A.RMH.0012 reviews the United Arab Emirates (UAE) market and supply chain for centralized value add processing operations of case ready and supermarket layouts of fresh red meat. It was evident how Australian Beef and Lamb are already well regarded and supported throughout, being trusted and known as clean, safe and high quality. The large super and hypermarkets are continually being built and getting the large volume of the retail food shoppers budget in the UAE. It is inevitable that to meet this growth, centralisation of Case Ready packaged meats will be the next emerging trend, as the retailers seek to lock in controls of quality and consistency and reducing the need for skilled labour as well as creating more valuable floor space in these large constructions.
V.RDP.1003 provides information and useful insight from patent and published literature data into the structure and nature of innovation and research within the 'smart packaging' technology field, specifically to identify technologies that can assist Australian food producers to deliver food products to exports markets that deliver on food safety, provenance, shelf life, traceability, and integrity that can contribute to capturing a price premium.
