The Australian Food and Grocery Council has welcomed the opportunity to work with the federal government to ensure the growth of domestic manufacturing as well as strengthen global supply chains, as the sector faces ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The food and grocery manufacturing sector is Australia’s largest manufacturing sector, worth $122.1 billion and employing around 273,300 Australians. It represents almost 40 per cent of total manufacturing employment, particularly for many regional and rural communities, where 39.3 per cent of these jobs are based.
By working with the government, the AFGC believes it will give an opportunity to increase jobs across cities and boos local economies, while providing a stable economic environment for domestic manufacturing to grow.
“Drought, bushfires, rising input prices, seven-years of consecutive supermarket price deflation and now COVID-19 have put significant pressure on the sector and the AFGC welcomes the opportunity to work with the government to determine ways the sector can remain a powerhouse and support increased domestic manufacturing,” said AFGC acting CEO Dr Geoffrey Annison.
“During this crisis our food and grocery manufacturers continue to work around the clock to ensure Australians have access to the essential products they need. This has meant ramping up operations to 24/7 to ensure products are making it to supermarket shelves.”
Annison said that Australia produces enough food to feed 75 million people – enough to feed the population three times over.
“We have a very safe, reliable and efficient food supply chain. We need to make sure that it is optimised by taking a whole of food system approach – literally from paddock to plate – in a manner which secures key agricultural production of key inputs such as rice, honey and horticultural products for domestic food process.”
