Monday 24 May 2010
Growing the Australian Pineapple Industry through Fresh Cuts and AIC TechClinics
Freshly cut fruit, properly packaged and served, can multiply the ‘value’ of the uncut fruit by as much as ten times. Many of us are familiar with packaged cut apple, conveniently served by airlines in special cellophane bags that preserve its colour and keep it tasting fresh. Apple has long been the ‘golden child’ of the fresh cut market, with proven success across Europe, the Americas and Australia . How much more convenient would it be to serve pineapple as a fresh cut product? An opportunity was recently brought to the AIC that would enable Australia to follow on from this success with apples, and to develop a new, fresh cut market for pineapple.
The pineapple fresh cuts opportunity has the potential to provide a host of economic benefits through exporting and job creation opportunities, and health benefits by providing more convenient healthy food options for Australians.
In order to explore this opportunity further, the AIC first facilitated an R&D Forum in November 2009 on behalf of Queensland Government’s Department of Employment, Economic Development (DEEDI). The objective of an R&D Forum is to assemble and draw upon national expertise to properly frame a contemporary industry challenge or market opportunity, and to reach a shared understanding of the alternative solutions available.
The AIC has facilitated R&D Forums across a broad range of topics and sectors, including Coal Seam Gas, Biofuels, Marine Waste, Food Processing, Food Technology, Bio-commodities, Social Science Innovation, and Smart Grids.
Further to the R&D Forum’s findings, the AIC facilitated a TechClinic on behalf of DEEDI to determine if a consortium could be developed between pineapple growers, processors and marketing distribution systems to develop and sell fresh cut pineapple snacks in Australia and overseas.
The key objective of a TechClinic is to identify and facilitate, as a group or sector, the necessary steps required to develop innovative solutions to satisfy a market need, and encourage interested parties to collaborate towards a solution. TechClinics seek to stimulate the receptiveness of potential end-users of research and technology (including government, industry and community), and focus researchers (universities, research organisations and individual researchers) and businesses on actual market requirements.
Such a TechClinic to investigate the development of the fresh cut pineapple market was held in March 2010 to drive the opportunity forward.
A range of issues and opportunities were addressed, including:
- Availability of packaging specific to fresh cuts and pineapple to allow extended shelf life;
- Competition issues between major growers that could limit fresh processed market cooperation;
- Funding issues for research to develop innovative tropical fruit processing technology;
- New technology opportunities that might be cross-functional and provide further economic benefits.
The TechClinic sought to achieve:
- The development of an industry innovation project with collaboration from key individuals from the value chain;
- The development and coordination of focussed research into shelf-life extending packaging technologies and tropical fruit processing technologies;
- Coordinated industry collaboration for supply/value chain development.
A range of players from industry, government and the research sector were in attendance and outcomes included actions to; undertake market research to identify potential distribution channels and target market needs for the product, investigate funding sources available, and to prepare a health properties communication plan for fresh cut pineapple.
Participant feedback was extremely positive - 95% of respondents felt that the TechClinic made positive steps towards finding a workable solution for the issues discussed. Jason Martin (of Soudan Lane) said the TechClinic was "A well managed process allowing for all components of a project to work together for a successful outcome" while Mala Gamage (of CSIRO) said the TechClinic presented “Great facilitation of a group with wide experience, interest and commitment".
Follow up sessions are now being undertaken to further progress the opportunities identified during the TechClinic, including commercial discussions.
The AIC undertakes regular TechClinics to address industry challenges and to embrace sector-wide opportunities. Previous TechClinics have investigated the potential of soybean as a feedstock for the bee industry, evaluated sustainable tour boat operations and analysed energy storage and generation solutions for remote off grid solar and wind generation projects.
If you would like to find out more about AIC Tech Clinics please visit our website or contact us on (07) 3853 5225 or e-mail info@ausicom.com for further information.
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