From fresh Thai curry sauces and home-style Italian chilli oil, to raw, organic mousses, and umami seaweed condiments and snacks; these are the new Australian FMCG businesses turning their dreams into a reality, thanks to a unique new incubator and accelerator program, Seedlab Australia.
The Woolworths-backed FMCG business incubator, Seedlab Australia, has been funding small businesses with intel, not capital, at no cost to participants for 19 months, and is already making a significant impact on the FMCG industry at large with a projected $11m in sales, saved expenditure and increased business value in the next 12 months across the participant cohort.
According to Seedlab’s financial expert partners Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, which participants have direct access to, the common challenges for founders of early stage FMCG businesses are understanding product costs, retail pricing and ensuring profit and loss and cash flow statements are correctly accounted for.
“It’s often the early financial learnings and small changes that can provide businesses with long term impact, setting them up for future success,” said Jeremy Rowe, senior manager – Innovation at Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand.
To date, Seedlab Australia’s incubator program, Bootcamp and accelerator program, Cultivate have helped launch over 30 new products into Woolworths and created over 50 new full-time jobs for a range of new businesses with high quality health and wellness-focused food and drink products, and sustainably produced personal and home care products.
According to the 2023 Food Corp Network Trend Forecast, 75 per cent of Australians are feeling the effects of increased cost of living pressures, which is increasing at-home dining and entertaining by 38 per cent.
The report also found that 91 per cent of Australian consumers are ‘opting in’ to health and wellness and are re-evaluating their approach and relationship to food, resulting in supermarket shifts to ‘better for you’, fresher and healthier products and alternatives.
Thai Larder, Bippi Foods, goraw desserts, and Alg Seaweed are just some of the new brands with ‘better-for-you’ products experiencing growth since participating in Seedlab, which is designed to arm entrepreneurs with business, product, manufacturing, supplier and distribution, leadership and marketing acumen and more.