GIWA Pulse Forum: Money should be pumped into promoting the health benefits of lupins, rather than research

The boss of national food company The Lupin Co says he believes the bulk of lupin research and development funding should be redirected into marketing for human food to supercharge demand. David Fienberg said he had to apologise to the researchers in the room at the Grains Industry Association of WA Pulse Forum on June 22, but said he believed “all the work had been done”. The Lupin Co managing director called for funding to be redirected into marketing lupins as human food and establishing a strong food technology industry in Perth to “develop the foods we need in the future”. “If you stopped all the research and development money and redirected it into lupins for human food for one year, we would find the tipping point of lupins for a quality human food to a quality market,” Mr Fienberg said. “My wish, would be for there to be a room full of investors with capital, looking for a highly profitable future market in the short term. “In all my global travels, the one thing that resonates to me is when I talk to anyone about Australian sweet lupin as a human food is ‘this is amazing, how come I haven’t heard of it’. “And I take a breath and I explain to them why it is.” Originally from a farm at Mullewa, Mr Fienberg said his family grew lupins to provide nutrition to sheep and found feeding breeding ewes lupins could bolster twinning rates by 40 per cent. In addition, the sperm content of rams would double. While Mr Fienberg said he wasn’t sure whether bolstering fertility was the best marketing strategy for lupins and human foods, the benefits were clear. “Our primary focus (on the farm) was to grow lupins, mainly because of sheep productivity, it was less about soil productivity and carbon capture,” he said. “We knew that it did a whole bunch of good things for the soil.” Mr Fienberg said there was enormous potential for farmers to capitalise on the human food market. Only about five per cent of the about 500,000 tonnes of Australian lupins produced annually, mostly in WA, is used for human consumption, the rest being for stock feed. He said about 80 per cent of the revenue for The Lupin Co comes from lupin flake sold on the company website, which sells for $7.20 per pack – which equalled about $1700 per tonne. “One of our competitors in the US sells a lupin pasta and the equivalent rate of $US32 per kilo . . . So about $US32,000 per tonne,” he said. “So our whole strategic focus has to be to get closer and closer to the human mouth. We cannot stay in the realm of a commodity if we really want the change to happen.” Mr Fienberg said he believed the time was right for lupins to take centre space on dinner tables. “The $US32,000 per tonne is where we’ve got to get to,” he said. “The world has never heard about Australia Sweet Lupins. “Again, I apologise to the research community in this space. But if I was gone for a day, I would take your budget off you I would put it all into marketing. And within 12 months, we would see a massive shift in what we now see as the demand “The last two and a half years have been a significant challenge,” he said. “But the next two and a half years are going to be enormously exciting.” The LupinCo was founded in 2016 to deliver WA grown and processed lupins to the domestic and international markets. TLC sources WA lupins grown exclusively by its farmer shareholder members and is still operating. The Lupin Co is not the first company to try and sell lupin products for human food, but the industry has a chequered history in WA. The same year The Lupin Co was launched, grain handler CBH sold its award-winning Lupin Foods Australia business after three years of operating. In 2018, Mullewa farmers Tanya and Robert Kitto launched their lupin flour products into the growing gluten-free market. Two years later, Dowerin farming brothers Glen and Todd Quartermaine launched a new lupin chip snack business Pinare Lupin Chips with products sold in Thailand and Australia.