NEW FOOD ENTREPRENEUR << Continued from page 6 IN RESIDENCE AT RIDDET INNOVATION Serial entrepreneur Phil McGrath is the inaugural food entrepreneur in residence at Riddet Innovation…and his aim is to encourage greater food innovation, entrepreneurial www.foodtechnology.co.nz 7 NEWS SNIPS The Obama administration is pressuring the food industry to make items like bread and sliced turkey less salty in an effort to prevent thousands of deaths each year from heart disease and stroke An Italian baker will supply his ex-wife with $664 worth of pizza every month instead of child support Finland is vying to produce leading brands of frozen vegetables including leeks, peas, parsnips, spinach, carrots, swede, celery and beetroot The German government will offer $100m in aid to help dairy farmers cope with falling milk prices Genetically modified AquAdvantage salmon has been declared as safe as conventional salmon Portugese sardine prices are rocketing in price after the lowest catch by volume on record…just 13,729 tonnes. N E W S into the non-GMO niche,” Carapiet says. “GMO–free is a powerful way to differentiate New Zealand milk in the global market. GMO animal feed is characteristic of low-end commodity producers with which Fonterra is trying to compete in global auctions.” He says companies can no longer trust the safety of the GM foods that Food Standards Authority (FSANZ) has approved. Top Southeast Asian agribusiness leaders and entrepreneurs will visit Hamilton agricultural show Fieldays on June 16 as part of a programme run by the Asia New Zealand Foundation. The group is coming to New Zealand for a week-long programme through the ASEAN Young Business Leaders Initiative, managed by the Asia New Zealand Foundation for the New Zealand Government, and will attend an international networking function, as well as visit farms and orchards. The group will also attend government briefings in Wellington, and a special visit to agritech company Tru-Test Group. ASEAN is a grouping of 10 Southeast Asian nations with a population of more than 620 million. New Zealand has a free trade agreement in place with ASEAN through the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA (AANZFTA). If your usual morning coffee doesn’t do it for you anymore, how about a delicious treat that’s the new craze sweeping South Africa. The ‘Coffee in a Cone’, developed by barista Dayne Levinrad earlier this year and considered to be the world’s most Instagrammed coffee at one million ‘likes’ from around the world, is a coffee in a chocolate lined wafer cone. Levinrad says the treat is harder to create than it looks, as the wafers need to be leak-free and coated on the inside with four different types of chocolate mixtures, hardened by changeable amounts of cacao content. Drinkers have only 10 minutes to finish the drink before the four layers melt, and sadly, it’s only available in South Africa, although Levinrad is hoping to bring it to New Zealand at some stage. thinking and commercialisation of food science and technology ideas. The self-confessed foodie, who has spent many years in food industry positions in New Zealand and overseas, will work alongside Massey University’s staff and students to tweak their entrepreneurial thinking, as well as assist companies wanting to work with the FoodPilot and utilise Riddett’s technical expertise. “My experience is wide-ranging, and more recently I have focused on overseas market trends, particularly in disruptive retail foods,” McGrath says. “I love generating new ideas, disrupting markets, problem-solving and helping people build new brands. This new role is the ideal opportunity for me to share my passion for commercialising food innovation.” A Massey graduate, McGrath was co-founder of the Rafferty’s Garden baby food brand, and now spends a large part of his year travelling the world with his company Food Locomotive, looking for food market opportunities. His team includes former NASA food scientists, food safety specialists and commercialisation experts, and he has worked Phil McGrath on products ranging from high-value vegetable powders to value-added honey products. Riddet Innovation has access to a wealth of industry-experienced expertise within Massey University’s School of Food and Nutrition and the Food Innovation Team, as well as the capability of the FoodPilot (part of the Food Innovation Network) and the Nutrition Laboratory. “the prawn fishermen wanted to take a bit more control of their own destiny.” Catching around 700 tonnes of Western King prawns in two annual seasons in Spencer Gulf (about 200km west of Adelaide), the collective exports 10 per cent to high-end restaurants and retailers in Europe and five per cent to Hong Kong, Singapore and China…with aspirations to expand exporting to 20 per cent by the end of 2016. The Spencer Gulf King Prawn fishery received the prestigious Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification in 2012, and is the first prawn fishery in the world to gain certification for sustainability. The certification recognises the fishery’s first-rate management practices, which include effort restrictions, closed fishing periods, closed areas and harvest strategies to regulate the total catch. “In most of our marketplaces in Europe, we would not have even got a look in if the fishery was not MSC certified,” Richardson says. “The sustainability size is starting to enter into their thinking as well. In five-star restaurants in Asia, they are starting to adopt policies where they will only use sustainable seafood, so it’s becoming more important.” Spencer Gulf is unique in that it’s a single species prawn fishery – most other prawn fishing areas catch Tiger Prawn with King Prawn and Banana Prawn. Western King prawns are proving popular in Northwest European countries including France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium. “Because of the price point of our prawns and the logistics of getting things over there, it has to be targeted to the top end of the market,” Richardson says. The SA Prawn Co-op won a South Australian Food Industry Award in 2015.
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