CMA: Y19/20 New products MVP concept development

Summary

Rabobank's TERRA program is a global innovation accelerator program that brings together experts and innovators in a range of areas, including supply chain optimisation, food traceability and transparency, and waste reduction.

In 2019, MLA participated in the fourth Food and Agriculture Accelerator TERRA program to co-develop new products, gain market and consumer insights, and experiment with new technologies and practices. MLA was part of a wider group of Food and Ag companies who reviewed proposed innovation solutions from 63 applicants that aligned to MLA's vision.

During the five-month program, MLA partnered with Phyto Corporation, Shameless Pets LLC, The Better Meat Co and Corumat Inc to co-create several new products, including biodegradable packaging and pet food containing upcycled beef.

Objectives

This Company Managed Agreement (CMA) supported MLA's contribution and participation in the RocketSpace (TERRA) 2019 Industry Collaborative Program. This related to consumables and travel expenses to undertake the pilot with four international food tech start-ups.

Key findings

• Inclusion of Australian red meat in various new product offerings were all fast prototyped as part of TERRA program, including:
  • pet food
  • packaging trays made with food waste
  • bone broths 
  • meatballs made with plant protein
  • seaweed boosts.
• Expenses covered by this project to action these opportunities enabled MLA to ideate and fail-fast with the focus on addressing - "should we invest further, instead of how does the tech work".
• This project also secured four pilot products from USA and Korea, which were connected with MLA's International Markets team. This highlights new ways for the R&D MLA team to work with an innovative approach.

Benefits to industry

The TERRA program has enabled MLA to:

• collaborate with start-up companies to identify new solutions to industry challenges
• identify new opportunities for funding research and development in a sustainable and cost-effective way
• use innovative technologies to address product longevity and waste reduction.

Prototyping new products and gaining a better understanding of packaging materials and food waste allows MLA to demonstrate new food, ingredient and packaging technologies for red meat.

MLA action

• MLA has continued the collaboration with Rabobank in 2020/21, selecting a further four pilots to partner with - this time from USA and England.
• MLA has also connected Australian red meat exporters with the pilot companies from the TERRA 2019 cohort.

Future research

Identifying ways to tap into the wider innovation eco-system of Food Tech start-ups and ways of working to ideate continues to be an area of interest for MLA.

MLA's 2025 Strategy reflects the need for new products to drive higher carcase value and to run to ground and fail-fast logic before selecting which initiative to pursue as part of the 'fewer, bigger, bolder' intiative.

Related resources

MLA RocketSpace (TERRA) 2019 Industry Collaborative Program, MLA final report, 02 July 2020.