Manufacturing Research
Fluctuating milk prices, a tight milk supply and intense competition in high value markets create a tough environment for Australian dairy manufacturers. The ability to innovate and quickly adopt manufacturing technologies is vital to maintain competitiveness in the world dairy market. Dairy Australia and its research partners are committed to helping dairy manufacturers source and develop new knowledge, technologies and capabilities.
Dairy Australia co-ordinates much of the dairy industry’s investment in pre-competitive manufacturing research as well as investing it own funds in this area. The pre-competitive research model is based upon the collective pooling of funding and research resources to develop new knowledge and innovation and share it across the entire industry.
Over half of Dairy Australia’s spend on manufacturing research goes to support Dairy Innovation Australia Ltd, the new innovation centre established in Werribee, Victoria in 2007. Dairy Australia is the centre’s largest investor and led its formation through the merger of the Dairy Process Engineering Centre, Australian Starter Culture Research Centre, UHT Centre, Australian Cheese Technology Program, and Dairy Ingredients Group of Australia.
Dairy Innovation Australia will invest more than $15 million over the next three years to generate innovations in dairy processing and bulk ingredients, functional foods and ingredients, and cheese starter cultures and fermented products.
The centre has state of the art facilities in starter culture production and leads teams of highly qualified scientific staff qualified in process engineering and design, food technology and applications, microbiology and ingredients sciences. Its main areas of expertise are in:
- Ingredients and applications
- Process engineering
- Culture research
- Cheese technology
- Health and nutrition
The other key areas of Dairy Australia-backed manufacturing research are:
- Bioscience technologies - e.g. bioactives ingredients discovery and the bioremediation of waste and other innovative applications of biotechnology.
- Sustainable production systems - the development of novel higher yielding, lower cost, more efficient and sustainable processing technologies and strategies.
- Technology transfer - the adoption and commercialisation of new technologies developed from current or past R&D projects in Australia and overseas.
- Health and nutrition – research into dairy fat, trans fat and obesity to accurately position the health and nutritional benefits of dairy products and ingredients.