AUSTRALIA needs to defend its share of the South East Asian noodle market and be more competitive for its expanding bread market.
That was the message delivered by Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre (AEGIC) market requirement and opportunities program leader Roslyn Jettner at the Grains Research & Development Corporation (GRDC) Research Update in Perth early last week.
It comes following the release of results from an AEGIC research project, which explored wheat quality preferences for a variety of noodle and bread products in South East Asia.
More than 20 milling companies in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines were involved in the GRDC-supported project.
Wheat purchasers and mill technicians were asked to rank the most important attributes when selecting wheat for the production of noodle and baked products.
The study found that Australian wheat had a good reputation in the noodle market, particularly in regards to wheat brightness, colour stability and texture for eating.
"Within our breeding program we have a focus on noodle colour, and also noodle colour stability and that's coming through with the wheat that we're growing," Ms Jettner said.
"Much of the noodles are sold in the marketplace or by hawkers on the streets so of course the appearance of the noodles are going to be so important.
"Not only the brightness of the noodle, but also the stability of the colour because it's out on the street, so we're looking at at least a 12 to 24 hour stability in the colour before the product could be sold.
"We need to defend Australia's share of this market under increasing competition by demonstrating the unique properties that Australian wheat has for noodles and focusing on that grain colour and texture."
Despite a strong hold over the noodle market in South East Asia, Ms Jettner said Australian wheat was not the preferred product in the region's bread market, with increased competition from low-cost exporters such as Russia, Ukraine, Argentina and North America.
"Australian wheat is currently less competitive for a range of baked products, including the rapidly expanding premium bread, biscuits, cakes and confectionary segments.
"Australia faces strong competition from North American wheat, which has a good reputation in the high-value baking sector and commands a significant premium."
Ms Jettner highlighted the importance of differentiating the Australian product on functionality and quality, to ensure the product is competing on more than price and logistics in the market place.
She said said moving forward, it was essential to understand what quality requirements were most important to South East Asian markets to ensure Australia produced wheat that matched those requirements.
"As we build clarity around what are exactly the characteristics the market is valuing for our wheat for those types of products, we can start to build a strategy as an industry of how we're going to attack that market," she said.
"Australia needs to defend its share of the South East Asian noodle market, drive improvements in wheat quality for bread making, and provide more technical support for the Australian industry and South East Asian milling companies.
"South East Asia is the largest and fastest-growing market for Australian wheat, these markets are critical to supporting demand and prices for Australian wheat and are extremely important for Australian producers.
"Continuing to engage with our South East Asian customers to raise awareness of their needs and achieve improvement in wheat quality attributes for both noodle and bakery products will help Australia maintain its competitive advantage and price position."
