PRINTING OUR OWN FOOD Another fortnight passes and we have another lacklustre Global Dairy Trade (GDT) result and confirmation that Fonterra has revised its milk price again. Amongst all the doom and gloom from that, I had an e-mail from a colleague who obviously had plenty time over summer to do some serious thinking. All the so-called experts constantly put the boot into the New Zealand dairy industry because we are supposedly just producing commodity products, and we don’t produce enough of the high end consumer-branded products. The question that was posed to me is, are these branded consumer products the way of the future, or are they going to be a thing of the past? Because not only are 3D printers becoming readily available, but are also arriving on the scene. These 3D food printers aren’t quite doing the job yet of the food replicators from Star Trek, and at the moment they just seem to do cake decorations, lollies and a few other things. But one can assume they will only get better. The question is, will they be a short-lived trendy fad, or are they here to stay? And, if they are here to stay, what does that mean? From what I can see on YouTube, a conventional 18 JUNE 2016 printer is inserted with cartridges but, instead of ink, they contain ingredients needed for a food product. Then, much like your standard printer, you load your document…in this case, a recipe in a 3D format…and hit print. Imagine if this technology was to take off and become a part of every kitchen. How would that change things for us food producers? Well, the consumer is now no longer going to the supermarket looking for finished manufactured food stuffs. Instead, they are looking for ingredients – and the manufacturing takes place in their kitchen. When you think about all the various food products that milk or components of milk go into, it’s quite a few. So it’s more than likely that a good number of the recipes for these 3D food printers will require various dairy ingredients. So should the likes of Fonterra be worried about moving products from its ingredients business into consumer-branded products? Or instead, should they be looking at repackaging those ingredients from half ton bags (or whatever they ship in), into smaller ready-to-use packaging for home manufacturing? If this is the future, then strangely enough through not being fast enough, we are very well positioned to take advantage of it. Because we are selling a non-traditional product, I dare say there will be a few big loopholes in all the trade protection rules in the markets that are likely to uptake this technology first in Europe and M Y S AY By Andrew Hoggard the United States. The trade-off from all of this is likely to be that the customer who can afford a 3D food printer is likely to be rather discerning, so they are going to pay a good amount of attention to the history of the ingredients that go into their printer. Which means, those standards for everything from sustainability to animal welfare are only going to get higher. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether this is going to be a fad or not. I certainly hope they are considering buying one of these printers to put in the staff kitchen at the Fonterra Research Centre. I reckon that might be the ideal way to come up with the next big thing. Andrew Hoggard is Federated Farmers Dairy Industry chair. Then, much like your standard printer, you load your document… in this case, a recipe in a 3D format…and hit print. Hoggard with daughters Payton (far left, 4) and Michalea (6)
1-48 FT June16
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