Food science feeds needs of growing industry

The FoodBowl's operations team provides support for companies using the processing facility.

The food and beverage sector is on song to meet its exporting goal, reports Graham Skellern.

Auckland has set an ambitious goal of doubling export growth to 6 per cent a year and the food and beverage sector, backed by plenty of research and development, is well placed to achieve that target.

Food and beverage is the region's biggest industry sector, and it is also the centre of New Zealand's food processing. Two thirds of the top 50 food and beverage companies in the country, including multi-nationals, have their head offices and manufacturing plants in Auckland.

The sector, which employs more than 23,000 people among a total of 1700 processing firms, generates nearly $5 billion, or almost 10 per cent, to the Auckland gross domestic product (GDP), and exports have reached $3.67 billion.

The plan is to increase exports by $2.7 billion to $6.37 billion by 2025 and cement Auckland's position as the food innovation hub of the Asian Pacific region.

The FoodBowl (Te Ipu Kai), part of the New Zealand Food Innovation Network, is making a significant contribution to the sector's growth by opening up its doors for companies of all sizes to develop, test and produce new products, particularly for exports.

The state-of-the-art, export certified FoodBowl has been fully operational for nearly 18 months and so far has hosted more than 90 different companies, many of them making repeat visits .

Now two thirds owned by Callaghan Innovation and one third by Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (Ateed), The FoodBowl is committed to adding value to food and beverage exports.

"The utilisation (of The FoodBowl) has increased over the last five months," says its chief executive, Sarita Males. "We are now getting more medium to large-sized companies, as well as the start-ups."

Just recently, an established New Zealand food company completed four 24-hour production runs of a new product for the Asian markets. Those production runs were "trial" exports to gauge and substantiate the market demand.

A nutraceutical company is planning to use The FoodBowl for periods over the next two years to complete development work and early-market production runs for Japan.

Males says The FoodBowl staff have been in touch with more than 600 companies since starting up, and there had to be a tipping point." Everyone is at a different stage of new product development, and when you talk to enough people, they will start using The FoodBowl. It's gathering a lot of momentum," she says.

"A number of companies have told us they would not have considered some of the product development, or innovation, without The FoodBowl. They needed somewhere else to undertake the development work before deciding whether to invest capital into new processing technology.

"Other companies, which have no facilities at all, are using us for commercial production before graduating to contract manufacturers. And we are here to help the small companies upskill and upscale in terms of food safety and processing systems.

"We can make a huge contribution to the growth of the food and beverage sector," says Males. "We are not only providing a processing facility but also access to a wider external network of highly skilled technologists, researchers and scientists, equipment and packaging suppliers, venture capitalists and other funders, and marketing and brand development firms.

"What we are doing is adding value to food and beverage production rather than relying on trading in commodity products."

The FoodBowl, located near Auckland International Airport, has invested in the latest equipment for freeze drying, high pressure processing (HPP), twin-screw extrusion, milling/grinding and sieving, VBlending, general processing and retorting (sterilised cooking under pressure), product development kitchens and microwave thawing.

A variety of packaging options is available: bottling, canning, pouches, vacuum packs, cartons, pottles and free flow wrapping.

The FoodBowl is presently undergoing validation for its aseptic bottle filling line to pack ultra-heat treatment (UHT) products into recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles.

The FoodBowl operates under red-line hygiene protocol and has an accredited Food Safety plan and Risk Management programme, meaning samples can be safely produced for testing in international markets.

Its customers have exclusive use of one of the four processing halls which can be hired for as long as they want, and they have access to more than 200 different pieces of ancillary equipment.

One of the more sought-after pieces of equipment is the sophisticated HPP machine which extends the shelf life of food and beverage products and enables companies to explore new markets further afield.

"People are still learning about the possibilities of HPP and we ran an international workshop to educate the industry on the potential of new products developed by that process," says Males.

HPP is the cold pasteurisation of foods and beverages at extremely high levels of pressure which effectively kills harmful bacteria while preserving taste, enzymes and overall nutrition. By avoiding heat processing, processed products retain a natural appearance and fresh taste.

Males says there is a lot of interest in developing natural, healthy juices; convenience meals that have healthier gourmet options; new seafood products and exotic food using ingredients such as deer velvet.

One customer that has benefited from The FoodBowl's services is Culley's, which last month was named the Best Emerging Business of the Year in the Ateed-organised Westpac Auckland South Business awards.

Owned by Chris Cullen, Culley's specialises in hot chilli sauces. Its Tijuana Green Chile won the New Zealand Cuisine Artisan award in 2013 for medium-hot green habanero chilli sauce, and the Mexican Chipotle was second in the Cajun Hot Sauce Festival 2013 in Louisiana, the home of Tabasco.

Cullen grew up in Auckland on exotic and spicy food served up by his Fijian-born mother Viki - "she was a fabulous cook". Cullen loved the taste and spread freshly chopped chilli on anything he could find.

His father warned him: "You'll lose your taste buds if you keep eating them like that." Far from it. Cullen used his refined taste buds to establish an award-winning food business.

Working as a chef in Auckland and Melbourne for 12 years, Cullen always conjured up his special chilli sauce.

He has sold his hot sauces at the weekly Clevedon Farmers Market for the past three years, and when the retail orders started flowing in he moved into The FoodBowl to complete development work and production runs.

Culley's has developed eight hot sauce varieties in 150ml bottles and is aiming to increase its retail outlets from 40 to more than 150 over the next 12 months, including Farro Fresh, Nosh Food Market and Sabato gourmet stores and selected New World and Countdown supermarkets.

The company is also following up inquiries from Sydney and Asia.

At The FoodBowl, Cullen oversees a production run, for 12 hours a day, every three to six weeks, bringing in a processing team of up to eight including his mother and two brothers.

Culley's is presently one of The FoodBowl's most active customers, and in 12 months has increased production volumes by nearly six times. "I can't sing the praises (of The FoodBowl) enough," says Cullen. "The scaleability, the certification, the equipment, the staff - the benefits there are amazing.

When Cullen first started production, the hot sauces needed to meet MPI (biosecurity) standards. He says: "I learnt a lot of technical skills very quickly such as pH tests, temperature periods and how to get a longer shelf life that could be technically validated as part of a HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control points) plan.

"You can just turn up and rock and roll. The FoodBowl staff has everything ready, from equipment to support structures. When a buyer hears we operate from The FoodBowl they know we can meet, and in many cases exceed, demand and that capacity will not be an issue. The FoodBowl has catapulted Culley's to where it is now," says Cullen.

Back in the city centre, more than 150 academics from four main faculties, are beavering away on several hundred food and health research projects. The University of Auckland's Food and Health Programme is the biggest in the country and it has been made more visible and accessible for the industry.

More than $3 million has been invested in the programme over the past three years, and the food and health management team chaired by Dean of Science Professor Grant Guilford works closely with Ateed, The FoodBowl, Callaghan Innovation and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

The research is designed to not only improve health outcomes and lifestyles but also enhance innovation and growth in the Auckland, and national, food and beverage sector.

"The programme recognises the importance of the food and beverage industry to Auckland's, and the country's, exporting (and economic) growth - we have to be aligned to industry needs," says the university's food and health sector innovation manager, Lynley Browne.

The research ranges from examining food structures, improving nutritional value, validating value-added bioactives, and completing clinical trials to measuring food quality and safety, tracking the nutrient content of processed foods, scaling up food and beverage businesses through product development, and enhancing public policy and consumer knowledge.

One project is looking at developing a robot that can identify and automatically pull out the troublesome "floating" pin bones in salmon fillets. Part of the research involves how much force the robot can apply without breaking the bones. The new technology would overtake the time-consuming and labour-intensive manual process of pulling out the bones with a pair of tweezers.

Another project is controlling the properties of "stretchy" mozzarella cheese to meet consumer needs. The research is looking at how the cheese, and other food, feels and behaves during chewing.

Byproducts from fish are also on the agenda. A leading university researcher visited Iceland to learn all about their byproducts that utilise 100 per cent of the fish. The Icelanders make more money out of the byproducts than the fillets, but in New Zealand 60 per cent of the fish is not used.

The university will complete research and trials for companies wanting to make new food claims, and it has developed Nutritrack which collects information on the nutrient composition of processed foods through a smartphone scanning application.

The data can identify opportunities to reformulate processed food and decrease sodium and saturated fat intakes.

The researchers are well aware that modern consumers require food to be safe, wholesome, of high quality and produced in an environmentally and ethically sound manner.

With all this energy and expertise going into food and beverage innovation, exports out of Auckland are bound to increase in the coming years.

Sending chicken to faraway markets

Leading poultry producer Tegel Foods was keen to expand its export markets, but first it had to extend the shelf life of its products to overcome the long-distance travel from New Zealand.

Tegel, based in Auckland, turned to the The FoodBowl for trials and testing, and produced a new chicken product for the Asian markets using the revolutionary high pressure processing (HPP) system.

The project team at Tegel made full use of the HPP machine at The Foodbowl for different trials over a period of a year. The team eliminated preservatives and chemical curing agents while using some natural ingredients sourced from the United States.

Finally, the team was happy its new product - chilled manuka-smoked chicken leg fillet would satisfy the Asian palate.

Tegel has become the first poultry producer in New Zealand to export a HPP product, and it is looking forward to ongoing monthly orders from Asia.

Experimenting with different combinations of the HPP system, the Tegel project team was able to extend the shelf life of the chilled product without changing most of its properties including colour and texture.

The existing shelf life was increased nearly three times, giving enough time for shipping (normally six weeks) to faraway markets and for retailers to stock and sell the leg fillets.

Chicken legs are sold at low prices in New Zealand but were regarded more highly in the Asian markets. "We have been able to add value to the back end of the bird, and the HPP trials and validation have created the basis for other new products," said a Tegel spokesperson.

Up till now, the main export market for cooked and frozen chicken has been Australia.