Page 18 - Food&Drink September 2019

SHOW WRAP
Gather around the Global Table
Australia’s inaugural agribusiness and food innovation conference was held in Melbourne this month. More than 2700 delegates and 200 thought leaders came together to discuss the challenges for our global food systems. Calls for change, collaboration, innovation and leadership permeated the four days. Kim Berry was there.
John Kerry:
get the job done
THE tone was set for Australia’s inaugural Global Table conference when former US Secretary of State John Kerry, in his opening keynote, told the 2700 delegates, “we can’t just sit on our asses and leave the political process to Neanderthals, who don’t want to believe in the future, simple”.
For Kerry, leadership, effort, frameworks, private sector and capital, innovation, and R&D are the keys to solving climate change.
“In an increasingly turbulent world, it is a time we need to bring nations together, not pull apart... We have to find ways to work together, to compromise,” he said.
The “my way or the highway” mentality is at play, too many systems are rigged, and governments are meant to serve the people... Anybody who
persists in putting forward the notion that you have to make a choice either between jobs and prosperity or protect the environment and deal with the future, that is a lie.”
The food sector is one part of the larger climate change problem, he said.
“We have to produce more food in better ways that can adapt to a changing planet. We have to increase food production by fifty per cent between now and 2050 just to keep pace with population growth. But growing more food is only part of the challenge. We have to become better stewards of the land.”
Kerry ended by quoting Nelson Mandela. “It always seems impossible until it is done”. “We can do it. Let’s get it done,” he said. ✷
18 | Food&Drink business | September 2019
Collaboration is key
AUSTRALIAN Packaging Covenant Organisation CEO Brooke Donnelly chaired a panel of industry leaders from Tetra Pak, BioPak, Detmold Group and CHEP, to discuss sustainable packaging and how to balance food waste reduction with delivering material circularity.
For Donnelly, sustainability issues may be complex, but Australia has great minds working on it.
“This is not an insular piece of work. This is about a
single-use cups on centre stage. Group GM of Marketing & Innovation Tom Lunn told delegates tackling hard issues for a necessary change should not be done alone.
“Don’t try doing this on your own. You need people on board who understand what the objections are. You’re going to find a lot of people who don’t want to help you. That’s not the way forward and so the partners that we’re working with are innovative partners who see new market opportunities.”
“This is not an insular piece of work. This
is about a collective action... We’re all heading in the same direction, and if one of us doesn’t get there, none of us get there.”
collective action towards achieving a sustainable packaging roadmap, and the best way we can do that is collaboration. We’re all heading in the same direction, and if one of us doesn’t get there, none of us get there.
Tetra Pak Oceania MD, Andrew Pooch said: “Companies need to ask the challenging questions of their manufacturer: how is the raw material for
the product produced, how
did you actually make this
stuff, how is it distributed,
how is it used from the manufacturing environment?”
Detmold Group’s Recycle Me program put the plight of
CHEP Australia executive GM Liz Mannes said the scope for reuse in Australia is “incredibly large” and untapped, and the asset ownership model an important insurance policy to build circularity.
The adoption of circular economy principles means designing for separation must be the first task completed, BioPak founder and sustainability director Richard Fine said. Compostability requires technical and biological nutrients to be separated and that is difficult when they are blended together in products. ✷