A $113 million federal grant to support Australian Plant Proteins and its partners build three plant protein manufacturing facilities in South Australia has been withdrawn because the project no longer meets the conditions of the program it was granted under, the federal government says.
The grant was announced in March 2022, as part of the previous Coalition government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative Collaboration Stream, with APP one of eight recipients to have their funding withdrawn.
The only food and beverage manufacturer to receive one of the nine approved grants was Turbine Sunshine Coast, which will receive $33 million. All told, the nine projects are worth $1.87 billion.
A statement on the Department of Industry, Science and Resources announced finalised contracts for $385 million under the MMI Collaboration Stream. Successful companies have received funding for up to a third of their project costs.
The department said, “Eight grant proposals originally approved for funding under this stream aren’t proceeding because they no longer meet the conditions of the program.”
Those eight represented $442 million of government investment.
At Senate Estimates on 1 June, department secretary Meghan Quinn said one of the reasons for the long time between announcing the grant recipients and executing the grant agreements was because of the complexity of collaboration grants.
“For these collaboration grants, which were specifically targeted at bringing together different entities to collaborate together to transform industry, there was quite a lot of detail that was left to the negotiation and execution stage rather than the initial filtering and application stage.
“Some external events have happened in that time that have made it difficult for some of the proponents to be able to provide certain aspects. There have been state government changes that have meant that some of the funding or policy arrangements under state programs changed. There were also changes in the business landscape for some of the collaborations. So, it is a more complex program. It has taken a fair bit of time to work through these agreements,” Quinn said.
Industry minister Ed Husic’s office and Australian Plant Proteins were contacted for comment.
