featured in this issue - NZIFST - The New Zealand Institute of Food ...

IN-BRIEF
In-Brief
Last month, over 300 NZIFST members and their guests visited The FoodBowl,
operated by New Zealand Food Innovation (Auckland) Limited (NZFIA), which
formally opens in October. The FoodBowl is a purpose-built facility for food and
beverage manufacturers to develop and commercialise product to take to national
and global markets.
Located near Auckland International Airport, The FoodBowl will be part of a New
Zealand-wide open-access network of innovation centres. The New Zealand
Food Innovation Network, or NZFIN, will be comprised of food science and technology
resources designed to enable New Zealand food and beverage businesses
of all sizes to grow, by supporting new product and process development with
pre-production pilot facilities and expertise.
Of the $16 million required to build and equip the Auckland facility, the government
contribution of $9.4 million was dedicated to specialist fit-out and production
equipment, with the Auckland City Council contributing $2.5 million and
Auckland International Airport providing build and leaseback of the facility.
Long time NZIFST member and past President Torben Sorensen has spent much
of 2011 specifying and sourcing equipment and supervising installations in the
seven process halls that make up the FoodBowl facilities.
The resources of the FoodBowl are designed to overcome a critical deficiency in
New Zealand’s new product development process – the ability to upscale sophisticated
new products from laboratory to commercial production – and will fill the
gap between the idea stage and getting successful product on market shelves. It
will also help manage the risks of innovation by minimising capital and expertise
investment until products and markets are proven.
In addition to the open-access commercialisation facilities, the network will provide
an ‘expertise bank’ of approachable, experienced and highly skilled technologists,
scientists and consultants, many of them members of NZIFST, to support
companies’ use of the facilities, and a knowledge base to identify and develop
opportunities for inter-company cooperation to build synergies and operational
scale for international success.
The FoodBowl is operational from October. Palmerston North and Canterbury
are now operating, and Waikato will follow in 2012. Each regional hub is focused
on industries germane to the region
The idea for the Food Innovation Centre was first mooted in 2001 by Professor
Ray Winger (formerly Professor of Food Science and Technology at Massey University),
whose vision was to provide a facility for small and medium food and
beverage companies to use while developing their ideas into commercial products.
Fish grading calculations improved at King
Salmon after literacy training
Workplace literacy
training improves
performance
Snap Fresh Foods and King Salmon are two food
companies throwing their weight behind workplace
literacy training.
Research shows about four in every 10 New Zealand
employees have difficulties with reading,
maths and communication.
At King Salmon, they increased first-grade salmon
production by 25% after factory staff learned how to
calculate fish grade correctly.
King Salmon is a world leader in high-end commercial
salmon farming, with farm sites, hatcheries and
processing facilities located throughout New Zealand.
In 2008, the company rolled out workplace
literacy training to 100 staff within its Ready-to-Eat
production plant in Nelson. Training was run on-site
by in-house trainers every week.
Employees were taught basic reading, writing,
maths and communication skills in a classroom and
on the factory floor while they graded and packed
salmon for export.
At the same time, King Salmon trainers rewrote all
the plant’s health and safety materials, making sure
the language was plain and glossaries and diagrams
were used. Wendy Walker, Ready-to-Eat factory production
manager and in-house trainer, says literacy
training has had a huge impact on plant productivity.
People became more skilled and confident in
their roles. The quality of their work improved and
more staff gained industry-based skills and qualifications
at faster rates after literacy training.
Training also improved the plant’s health and safety
performance, giving the Ministry of Agriculture and
Forestry reason to reduce their audits from once a
fortnight to six-monthly audits.
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Food New Zealand