Jeff Rogut, CEO of AACS, is on the Advisory Board of the Food Innovation Centre at Monash University. Please contact me at jeff@aacs.org.au for more information or contacts at this very innovative Centre where companies may develop new products that could benefit our industry.
DAMON KITNEY
August 29, 2017
The Australian
US billionaire Hamdi Ulukaya, the owner of America’s No 1 Greek yoghurt brand, Chobani, is supporting a new $3 million incubation facility at Melbourne’s Monash University designed to accelerate innovation in Australia’s food industry.
The new Incubator, part of Monash’s Food Innovation Centre, will have Chobani as its first client as the US firm launches its own incubator at the facility and commences new training programs at its Australian factory at Dandenong in Melbourne’s southeast.
“In the food world, Australia is going to be one of the food incubators, food start-ups that people are going to pay a lot of attention to,” Mr Ulukaya told The Australian today.
“I have said to my colleagues, you want to be a global brand and you have started in the US, your second market has to be Australia. You need to prove your business model in the US and then come to Australia.”
In late 2012, Chobani spent up to $US40 million setting up its first manufacturing facility outside the US in Dandenong South, after acquiring the Bead Foods business, the owner of the Gippsland Dairy yoghurt brand.
More recently it made a further $5m dollar investment in the plant to launch the Chobani Flip brand which has driven a 90 per cent lift in the group’s yoghurt sales in the three weeks since it was launched in Australian supermarkets.
Chobani is now the number 2 (by value) yoghurt manufacturer in the category in Australia behind the Kirin-owned Lion Group.
Mr Ulukaya said today there has never been a better time to be a food entrepreneur in Australia or around the world.
“Natural food start-ups with the right mindset can change categories, challenge the big guys and make a big difference in their communities. I love what’s happening with food start-ups here in Australia and want to share we’ve learned when it comes to scaling and fighting convention, like we’ve done with our other incubator programs,’’ he said.
“This (the Chobani Food Incubator) is a no-strings-attached, grant-based program to support entrepreneurs so we can further fuel the food revolution.”
The Incubator is made up of three, high tech, serviced industrial kitchens, a food grade scale-up lab and a collaborative lounge.
Mr Ulukaya and Victorian Labor MP Gabrielle Williams attended the official opening today in the Food Innovation Centre at Monash’s Clayton campus
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