Beston Global Food Co chairman Roger Sexton believes Australia...

Beston Global Food Co chairman Roger Sexton believes Australia has under-invested on the “demand side”, or consumer end, of the agricultural sector with advancements in technology now offering huge opportunities for growers and food manufactures to command premium prices for their produce.

Mr Sexton has argued a higher level of investment on the demand side would help producers pivot from being “price takers” to “price makers” as shoppers armed with their smartphones seek surety on what they buy at the supermarket and put on the table for their families.

Backing up his words with deeds, the Adelaide-based Beston has begun rolling out its “track and trace” anti-counterfeit app OZIRIS, with the technology now being attached to the company’s full portfolio of food and beverages — dairy, seafood and meat — and headed to key markets such as China where food security is a critical issue.

“When we set up our company we wanted to empower consumers so they could see what was in our food, see the ingredients, track and trace, and see where it came from and assure themselves it was safe to eat and the food hasn’t been counterfeited,” Mr Sexton told The Australian.

“We looked around the world for a technology for this but we couldn’t find one so we developed our own and that is OZIRIS.”

Food product counterfeiting worldwide is worth an estimated $US1.7 trillion. With the Chinese government stating that about 40 per cent of all food sold online in China is counterfeit, and cases of food scares that have caused deaths, such as poisoned infant milk powder, the use of a track and trace app was an obvious opportunity to Beston.

OZIRIS uses a customised platform that enables consumers to verify the source, quality and integrity of food.

“Already (Chinese) shoppers are voting with their wallets and buying imported food because they think (it) is safer than Chinese food, so Australia and New Zealand are well placed in that regards,” Mr Sexton said.

“But this OZIRIS app provides them with the added surety they can actually check it is an Australian product and hasn’t been counterfeited and they can see all ingredients. With our cheese they can see where the milk has come out of the cows, what was added to the milk to make it cheese where it was shipped out of Australia, shipped to Shanghai, and all along the supply chain.”

Beston, which listed on the Australian Securities Exchange last year after raising more than $100 million, has secured four patents around its technology, and Mr Sexton said it was investments such as these at the demand side of the sector that would help drive profitability.

“With that can come pricing power, so Australian food producers have to differentiate in the marketplace so they can get pricing power and get to be a price maker rather than price taker, which is starting to happen.”