Terry
Andrew what do you see as the challenges for local food and wine people here in South Australia?

Andrew
Well its early days, I’ve only been here 6-7 days and I am still learning alot but I think a couple of major challenges. One is connecting with the consumers of your products, you’re at the end of the world here in South Australia and many of your consumers are a long, long way away and my perception is that there’s the history of exporting products and not really knowing where it ends up, who’s consuming it, so building consumer loyalty interest, the pool for South Australian products is very limited if we don’t actually know where their ending up or what consumers think about them. So I think one major challenge is better information, getting better info through the value chain here in South Australia about what consumers around the world think about our products and our services and the way you do business. The other challenge I think is developing trust in the food chain, so I’ve had several conversations with state cols at different points in the value chain for different sectors and in addition to a lack of real insight in to consumers there seems to be a fundamental lack of trust, and information and trust are two fundamental enablers to value chains that work efficiently and effectively. So if the South Australia food and wine industry is going to have a sustainable competitive advantage in the global market then its got to get better connected with its consumers and it’s got to get better connected through building trust  and commitment within South Australian from primary production right the way through manufacturing, distribution and then into those customer markets whether they be domestic or international.

Terry
So it’s not good enough just to put food and wine in a container and forget about it so long as you get the money back for it.

Andrew
Yeah well, again, what do I know I’m learning about the way business is done here, but I think in most places around the world that was fine for twenty, thirty years after the war and through the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s but for the last ten years that’s become, that has become much more difficult to do and make consistently good returns and I think it’s going to become even more difficult to do when consumers become more and more demanding about knowing where stuff has come from, how it’s been produced, what their contribution of that value chain is to climate change, and how healthy and sustainable that product is that I’m consuming or giving to my kids. So the significant changes, in a State which I understand is fundamentally structured with SME’s and SME’s are not well resourced and they often lack strategic insight so unless we get some collaborative ventures going I can see there’s a real danger of that situation perpetuating.

Terry
How important is it for the food industry to show innovation in their respective roles?

Andrew
Absolutely, again I think it’s absolutely critical because the choices available to consumers around the world whether they be choices of products on supermarket shelves or choices of food on restaurant menus, it’s growing almost expediently as major food producers and exporters around the world compete. So innovation, not just in the products that we produce to excite and delight consumers but also innovation in the way we do business, so the way in which organisations interact sharing information, planning together and developing strategies that have clear target markets in mind, that’s critical and I think in most primary commodity value chains around the world in the agri food industry there isn’t very much of that. There is a distinct lack of innovation fundamentally in processes, the way we do things that we do and in many cases there is a lack of innovation in the products, what we do because we spent the last twenty or thirty years doing just what you said focusing on shipping large quantities of bulk commodities to anywhere in the world that wants them.