The Food and Beverage SME Packaging & Machinery Solution Centre is officially open for business, following its launch yesterday at foodpro.
The national initiative will provide matched funding, independent technical expertise and access to research facilities to help food and beverage SMEs evaluate sustainable packaging, processing and machinery innovations before making commercial investment decisions.
Led by the End Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre (EFW CRC) and RMIT University, the Centre has been established to help manufacturers transition to more sustainable packaging without increasing food loss and waste – a recognised risk when packaging formats change without adequate testing. It aims to provide an independent source of technical advice beyond that available from suppliers or industry peers.
Launching the Centre, project leader Professor Simon Lockrey of RMIT University and the EFW CRC said it had been developed to address a gap in support for SMEs navigating packaging and processing change.
"It represents an idea... to come up with a mechanism which we saw as a real deficiency in cooperative research, where we are providing resources for SMEs to do stuff that they don't necessarily have the resources or the bandwidth to do," he said.
The Centre will offer dollar-for-dollar grants of between $10,000 and $20,000, enabling eligible SMEs to access one of 11 research laboratories across Australia to assess proposed packaging, processing or machinery changes. Projects will include functional testing, such as shelf life and product performance, together with environmental analysis using life cycle assessment or mass flow cost analysis to support informed investment decisions.
According to the Centre's framework, funded projects must contribute to circular packaging innovation, new processing or new machinery, while demonstrating that food loss and waste is reduced or, at minimum, not increased. Projects are expected to be completed within 12 months.
The initiative is a collaboration between the EFW CRC, RMIT University, the Australasian Institute of Packaging (AIP), the Australian Packaging and Processing Machinery Association (APPMA) and Tetra Pak, with support from APCO and the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC). Empauer has also provided support. Technical expertise will be drawn from industry and university networks, with research undertaken through the CRC's 11 research providers.
Lockrey thanked APPMA, Tetra Pak, AIP and the EFW CRC for their financial and in-kind support, saying the Centre would not have been possible without their backing. Expressions of interest are now open, with eligible SMEs required to match CRC funding on a dollar-for-dollar basis.
