Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's in Moreton, which has been very ably represented by the member for Moreton behind me, a champion bloke.

The food pilot plant is a scaled-down factory built to simulate food and beverage manufacturing practices and allow manufacturing business to experiment and produce trial products under industrial conditions in batches of up to 1,000 litres. It was absolutely fantastic to see scientists and staff at the Health and Food Sciences Precinct working with small- and medium-sized manufacturing businesses, industry associations and other research organisations to develop product prototypes, reformulate products, understand and test the market for food and beverage products and optimise processing protocols, including post-harvest handling, storage conditions, packaging and production of value added products.

The committee also visited Fonterra Oceania's manufacturing facility at Campbellfield in Victoria. Fonterra is a dairy cooperative that collects milk from Australian farmers. The milk is then distributed across eight manufacturing sites across Victoria and Tasmania, where it is turned into great dairy products that generations of Australians have grown up with, including Perfect Italiano, Mainland, Western Star and Bega. Fonterra also sells dairy ingredients to many of the world's leading food companies and operates a dedicated sales channel for the food service industry, providing a full range of dairy products specifically designed for commercial kitchens. During the factory tour, our committee was shown many of the behind-the-scenes activities used to produce these great products, along with the multiple automation technologies incorporated through the production line. Of note was the extremely high level of the food safety and quality standards adhered to by all staff to ensure consumers receive safe and high-quality food. I reflect on how lucky we are here in Australia with our robust food safety and quality systems.

We were also invited to attend a soft opening of the Suntory Oceania facility in late August last year. Suntory Oceania's $400 million carbon-neutral multibeverage manufacturing and distribution facility is the largest single fast moving consumer goods investment in Australia in over a decade. Once fully operational mid this year, the 17-hectare carbon-neutral site will be the manufacturing distribution hub for the company's multibeverage portfolio of over 40 brands. The facility boasts strong sustainability credentials, with a combination of renewable energy sources, including 7,000 solar panels, state-of-the-art heating/cooling technology and on-site waste-management and water-recycling facilities. The site has the capacity to hold over 50,000 pallets of product. With the production floor boasting leading-edge fill speeds, the two canning lines combine to achieve a rate of 180,000 cans per hour, while the glass line's speed is 35,000 bottles per hour. It was pleasing to hear that the construction of the site delivered over 450 construction jobs. Likewise, the opening of the facility created 160 new operational jobs.

I also thank those that attended the committee's public hearings for their critical insight and expert knowledge which helped guide us to form the committee's recommendations for this inquiry. I want to extend my thanks to my committee colleagues, particularly the deputy chair, the Hon. Michelle Landry MP, and her staff, who have been absolutely wonderful right throughout this. We worked extremely closely, and I think it shows in the way that we put a report together that everyone had input in and the way everyone had the ability to do it. We actually had a pretty great time doing this. The rumour mill was that the committee secretariats were pretty jealous of what we were doing, but that was because we had a great crew together and we did work extremely hard.

I also want to thank the member for Cunningham, the member for Hunter, the member for Swan, the member for Calwell, the member for Bowman and the member for O'Connor. We have been a very strong bipartisan committee, producing two important reports during the body of this 47th parliament. I think the work that was done, as I said, was good and friendly spirited, and, again, I thank them for that.

It is always important to acknowledge the people that keep us in line. There were times when I think our secretariat might have felt like they were herding cats trying to keep us on time, and, when we were going to do some of the exciting things—

See this speech in context