Developing a high value strategy for red meat based Chinese banquet products (Crazy Dragon)

Summary

This co-funded project between Crazy Auntie's Food and MLA Donor Company (MDC) was initiated in 2017, with a view to develop opportunities to export "value added dumplings" containing Australian red meat, directly into China. This initiative is aligned to MLA's 2Morrows Foods Program for developing new products and services for emerging markets and changing consumer lifestyles and life stages to ultimately grow demand for Australian red meat.

The current market access position has China banning the importation of Australian "value added meat" products. An alternate value chain design therefore was required for dumplings to have inclusion of Australian red meat and with it an integrity system to ensure Australian meat origin is delivered and maintained.

This project offers a significant opportunity to generate mass impact in not only growing demand for Australian red meat but in to position Australian beef and lamb in the frozen snacks category with dumplings.

We intend to export Australian ingredients to approved contract manufacturers throughout China. The project will promote the "value added dumplings" as "contains Australian Beef and Lamb", supplying high quality produce to an eager market with a value chain that can deliver integrity of quality and provenance.

There is no doubt that the Chinese love and trust Australian Beef and Lamb, and by using trusted ingredients, there is a good opportunity to sell large quantities in a desirable dumplings format.

The project involved many steps:

• Creating a team consisting of Government representatives, local manufacturers and working closely with Haines Consulting Group.
• Developing the product and packaging for the Chinese market
• Finding the approved Australian supplier
• Finding the Chinese contract manufacturer for the dumplings
• Creating a unique story, appealing to the Chinese culture and supporting Australian produce.
• Developing a strong sales team to promote the products
• Market research in China
• Final approval for the model
• We are in the final commercialisation stages in readiness for launch of four skus in China during 2019.