The University of Sydney will partner with brands including Coca-Cola Amatil and SunRice to establish a research centre focusing on maintaining a sustainable food supply to our domestic and export markets.
The Training Centre for Food and Beverage Supply Chain Optimisation will operate in cooperation with the University of Newcastle, the CSIRO, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the NSW Department of Primary Industry, and industry partners will include Coca-Cola Amatil, SunRice, the Batlow Fruit Co-operative and Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing.
The University of Sydney Business School’s Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies is establishing the centre, and its chief investigator, Associate Professor Behnam Fahimnia, said a cost effective supply chain is essential if the food industry is to become more sustainable and competitive on the world stage.
“The key to survival is logistics excellence with a focus on the delivery of products to the right customer at the right time,” Fahimnia said. “One of the big challenges is size. Coca Cola Amatil, for example, has 35 production lines, 14 primary distribution centres and over 125,000 delivery points.”
“The rice industry generates a large volume of waste products in the form of rice hulls which are either buried or burnt,” he said. “This waste could be converted into energy in the form of electricity.”
Fahimnia is now looking for three PhD students to join the centre and work on supply chain design and management projects in close collaboration Coco-Cola Amatil and SunRice.
The Training Centre for Food and Beverage Supply Chain Optimisation is being funded with a substantial grant from the Australian Research Council.