Food pilot plant

The food pilot plant is a scaled-down factory built to simulate food and beverage manufacturing practice. It allows manufacturing businesses to experiment and produce trial product under industrial conditions (up to 1,000 litre batches).

The food pilot plant is located at the Health and Food Sciences Precinct in Coopers Plains.

The facility is registered with Safe Food Queensland.

How we can help you

Our scientists and staff help industry test food products from idea stage through to production-ready.

We regularly work with small and medium-sized manufacturing business, industry associations and other research organisations to:

• develop product prototypes
• reformulate products
• understand and test the market for food and beverage products
• optimise processing protocols, including post-harvest handling, storage conditions, packaging and production of value-added products
• training in food hygiene and food processing operations.

The facility is jointly managed by:

• Department of Agriculture and Fisheries
• Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

Features

The factory bridges the gap between product formulation and full commercial manufacturing. It is designed to suit a variety of needs and includes a range of portable manufacturing equipment.

We can source and install equipment to suit many requirements.

Facilities

• 5 independent temperature controlled rooms
• dedicated industrial sized cold and freezer rooms for seafood, meat and horticulture
• high hygiene cool room for fresh product handling
• warm room for thermal operation or fermentation
• dry goods storage
• food grade certification
• controlled loading dock areas
• postharvest aquaculture pilot plant

Equipment

There are over 80 pieces of manufacturing equipment on site, including:

• pasteuriser/UHT (liquid processing)
• homogeniser
• bandsaws, mincers, blender/ mixers
• smokehouse
• vacuum packers
• vibrating sieve
• individual quick freezing (IQF)
• blast freezer
• membrane filtration unit
• colloid mill
• cabinet dryer
• vacuum tumbler.

Queensland BrewLab

As part of the food pilot plant, you can access Queensland BrewLab's state-of-the-art beer brewing equipment to develop and test new recipes.

BrewLab food scientists can provide quality assurance testing including data on alcohol content, colour and acidity levels.

Prices

Service prices vary depending on the scale and needs of your project. We can give you an indicative price upon application.

Contact us

Phone 13 QGOV (13 74 68).