Why a distributed network rather than a single precinct?

The Riverina / Sunraysia region spans 600+ km across two states, with crop specialisation by district (citrus in the Sunraysia, rice at Leeton and Griffith, almonds at Robinvale, dairy at Goulburn). A single processing precinct wouldn't serve any district efficiently. The model instead establishes eight anchor processing sites coordinated through a shared cold-chain backbone — keeping value capture distributed across the region.

What is dairy fortification?

Adding vitamins (A, D), minerals, and protein concentrates to liquid milk to produce shelf-stable, longer-life, higher-nutrition dairy products for export. Major demand from Asian markets. The Riverina precinct includes ultra-high-temperature pasteurisation and fortification lines that capture this export value rather than shipping raw milk powder offshore.

How does the precinct help the local food-processing workforce?

The Riverina has lost more than ten major processing plants in the past decade — Murray Goulburn, Saputo, multiple meat works. Each closure left a skilled workforce stranded. The eight new anchor sites rebuild that processing base using the same workforce, retraining where needed, with co-located TAFE updating skills for modern process lines.

Growing Australia

Growing Australia is a practical platform for a stronger, more resilient Australia: 53 investments across six national priorities, designed to strengthen productive capacity, resilience and long-term living standards.

The complete long-term register has a central concept-stage estimate of $201.4 billion and is designed to be delivered gradually. A focused first-stage group is costed at about $10 billion, with the ledger, assumptions and evidence published openly.

Costing model
Citations and sources
Powering Australia
Making It Here
Cyber Australia
Feeding Australia
Our Neighbourhood
Building Australia