Food Innovation Australia Limited (FIAL) has announced its transition from a federally funded Food and Agribusiness Growth Centre to an independent, industry-led, not-for-profit organisation.
FIAL’s outgoing chair, Professor Roy Green, said FIAL would continue its role as industry ‘leader’ to realise a vision of one sector, one value chain, and one food system.
“It’s about agriculture and food manufacturing working together to deliver domestic and global market success,” said Green.
Over the past decade, FIAL has driven cultural and business change in Australia’s food and agribusiness sector and helped overcome barriers to innovation, productivity, and growth.
FIAL MD, Dr Mirjana Prica said FIAL had become the sector’s trusted partner.
“Building that trust is too valuable to lose, so we will introduce a new range of services in the coming months, and will build on our strengths around supporting market activities whilst attracting investment for the right business strategy and innovation.
“Not surprisingly, we want to share some of our key successes during this time. We were provided with $45.96M of Australian taxpayer funds to drive this change, and indeed we did with sector growth of almost 80 per cent, and a contribution to Gross Value Add of $95.9B in 2023,” said Prica.
Analysis by ACIL Allen concluded that FIAL’s work, including innovation grants to turn ideas into products and services, delivered a $231.7 million contribution to Australian GDP and created 1481 full-time equivalent jobs in 2021-2022.
“For every dollar of Commonwealth funds invested in innovation and related activities, there was a return on investment of 14.9 of direct and indirect benefits – which is why we are not stopping anytime soon.
“We look forward to continuing to deliver solutions that lead to tangible impact and make a real difference to businesses, the industry, sector and Australia,” said Prica.
