FARMERS in the northern horticultural industry are realising the benefits of value adding to their produce lines through the scientific innovations being provided by award winning Tasmanian-based business MacTavish:West.
Fairfax Media spoke to the businesses’ founder and namesake food scientist Dr Hazel MacTavish-West about the abundant opportunities for potential partnerships with northern growers during the recent Food Innovation Forum held in Townsville.
Dr MacTavish-West has 25 years experience in food science spent specifically researching horticultural crops grown for the food industry.
“The business specialises in communicating the unique attributes of plant-derived products and foods and providing a unique and diverse near-market approach, by working with a vast range of companies to identify new ingredients, develop innovative new products and to develop supply chains for them,” she said.
The business also provides promotional communication tools to showcase products and ideas with a big past horticulture innovation success being the Veggycation website that communicates the health benefits of vegetables to consumers and kids, and provides detailed technical information for vegetable producers on using health and nutritional claims legally and correctly.
“We undertook the Veggycation project on behalf of Horticulture Australia with Plant & Food Research Australia and the feedback we’ve received from industry and the general public has been phenomenal.”
Apart from presenting at the Food innovation Forum Dr MacTavish-West has been in discussions with Queensland Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’s to develop a range of products through their commercial entity Nutrafruit and she’s also working with a northern company developing products derived from Kakadu Plum for use in the pharmaceutical industry.
“I just love working with producers on real-life projects, and making a difference to their bottom line.”
She said the alliance being formed between northern Australia and Japan which was discussed at the forum is exciting news for the hort industry.
“The opportunity to develop food products to meet their needs should be a focus – there are plenty of mouths to feed in Asia – it was good to gain some clarity on where northern producers should aim their product development towards.
“There is wonderful produce grown in Northern Australia, which can be combined with technologies to capture and preserve the flavour, freshness, nutritional and health benefits.
“By adding food innovation to develop tasty, healthy, convenient food options, with good shelf-life and wonderful packaging and marketing to technologies like freeze drying and high pressure processing the future of the north’s fruit and veg export should soon be looking rosy.”
