What could Australian grown oats become beyond the breakfast bowl?
It is a question at the heart of My PlantCo’s Real Oats brand and one we are exploring through a significant industry and research partnership with Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA).
My PlantCo is collaborating with FaBA on a $5.6 million co-investment project designed to de-risk and accelerate the commercialisation of innovative oat-based foods. The partnership brings together market intelligence, consumer research, food science, sensory evaluation, product development and scale-up expertise to help transform promising ideas into products with genuine commercial potential.
Through this work, Real Oats is developing a new generation of plant-based oat foods, including Oat Spread, Oat Rice, Oat Noodles and Oat Pasta.
The ambition is bigger than creating individual products. It is about expanding how Australian–grown oats can be used, creating greater value from an important local crop and building new food categories that respond to changing consumer needs.
Connecting industry ambition with research capability
Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator is a major Australian research commercialisation initiative supported through the Australian Government’s Trailblazer Universities Program.
Hosted by The University of Queensland (UQ), FaBA brings together research and industry expertise from UQ, Queensland University of Technology, the University of Southern Queensland and commercialisation company UniQuest.
FaBA works with food and beverage businesses ranging from start-ups to established manufacturers, connecting them with researchers, specialised facilities, market intelligence and co-investment opportunities.
Its role is to help bridge a common gap in food innovation: the distance between a promising idea and a product that can be manufactured, positioned and successfully taken to market.
For My PlantCo, this has created access to a multidisciplinary team whose capabilities extend across consumer insight, market analysis, food structure, flavour chemistry, sensory science, product formulation, processing, nutritional analysis and commercialisation planning.
The partnership has been delivered through two complementary areas of FaBA: Innovation Pathways and Premium Food and Beverages.
Understanding the market through Innovation Pathways
A technically strong product still needs a clear reason to exist in the market.
FaBA’s Innovation Pathways team has helped My PlantCo examine the commercial environment surrounding new oat-based foods before significant resources are committed to bringing them to market.
The program has undertaken extensive research across domestic and international markets, identifying:
- market trends shaping emerging food categories;
- the competitive landscape for new oat-based products;
- relevant competitors, market size and market concentration;
- potential gaps and commercial opportunities;
- consumer needs, preferences and emerging behaviours;
- customer-centred product concepts;
- product positioning;
- packaging expectations; and
- sustainability considerations.
This work has helped My PlantCo move beyond assumptions and make more informed decisions about where Real Oats products may create the greatest value.
It has provided a stronger evidence base for understanding which products to prioritise, how they may be positioned, who they are designed for and what consumers are likely to expect from them.
The completed Innovation Pathways program now provides My PlantCo with valuable strategic insights to guide the next phase of commercialisation across the Real Oats portfolio.
Turning ideas into products with Premium Food and Beverages
While Innovation Pathways helps determine whether a product and market opportunity are commercially compelling, FaBA’s Premium Food and Beverages team helps answer the next question:
How can the product be developed, tested and prepared for commercial production?
The Premium Food and Beverages program connects food manufacturers with multidisciplinary researchers specialising in new product development and evaluation.
Working with My PlantCo, the team’s involvement has included:
- defining project objectives, technical requirements and development timelines;
- reviewing relevant research, ingredients and processing methods;
- product ideation and formulation;
- ingredient selection and sourcing;
- consideration of functional ingredients and packaging;
- analytical and sensory evaluation;
- refinement of product specifications;
- shelf-life and nutritional composition testing where required; and
- support for pilot production, scale-up and commercial manufacturing.
The team brings together expertise in food science, flavour chemistry, sensory evaluation, nutrition, microbiology, sustainable food systems, processing and food engineering.
It also provides access to specialist infrastructure across UQ, including food technology and pilot-processing equipment, sensory evaluation facilities, viscosity and texture analysis, spectroscopy, microscopy, microbiology, nutritional analysis and food and flavour chemistry laboratories.
These capabilities allow new food products to be assessed not only for how they taste, but also for their texture, structure, stability, composition, processing behaviour and consumer appeal.
This is particularly important when attempting to transform a familiar grain into entirely new food formats.
Progress across the Real Oats portfolio
As of July 2026, the industry partnership has already supported meaningful progress across My PlantCo’s Real Oats innovation pipeline.
Development work for Oat Spread has been completed, including the product development intellectual property required to support its pathway towards commercialisation.
Work on Oat Rice is progressing, with the product moving through development, sensory assessment and commercialisation planning.
The next phase of the partnership will extend into Oat Noodles and Oat Pasta, continuing to investigate how oats can be incorporated into convenient, nutritious and consumer-appealing everyday foods.
The foundational intellectual property behind aspects of this work was originally provided by the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre, whose functions have since transitioned into Grains Australia.
My PlantCo acknowledges Grains Australia as the provider of this important foundational intellectual property, which has helped create the platform from which further product development and commercialisation can occur.
The broader initiative is also supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation, reinforcing the connection between agricultural research, Australian grain growers, food innovation and commercial market opportunities.
Creating more value from Australian-grown oats
Australia has a strong reputation for producing high-quality agricultural ingredients. However, much of the long-term opportunity lies in creating greater value from those ingredients through advanced processing, product innovation and differentiated food brands.
Through Real Oats, My PlantCo is seeking to broaden the role oats can play in everyday food.
The vision is to move oats beyond their traditional associations with breakfast and demonstrate their potential across convenient, plant-based and nutritionally considered foods.
By bringing together Australian-grown oats, foundational grains research, universityresearch capability and commercial entrepreneurship, the My PlantCo and FaBA partnership is helping turn that vision into a more tangible pathway to market.
As work progresses from Oat Spread to Oat Rice, Oat Noodles and Oat Pasta, each project contributes to a larger ambition:
to unlock the untapped potential of Australian oats and create food innovations that nourish people, support Australian agriculture and contribute to a more sustainable future for food.
