Deep multidisciplinary expertise,applied where it has to work.
Strategy, innovation, science, engineering, design, operations and artificial intelligence.
Doctorate in biotechnology and biological sciences, on a foundation of food engineering, food science and technology, with executive training in the neuroscience of innovation.
Services and capabilities
Ten connected areas. Choose one on the dial to open it, or work through them below.
Innovation strategy
- Innovation and growth strategy, short term and long term
- Portfolio direction and product lifecycle
- Where to play, and what to stop doing
- How the function is structured, resourced and governed
- Diagnostics and options, with what each one costs as well as what it gains
New product development and technical
- End to end commercialisation: brief, formulation, packaging, trials, scale up, supply and launch
- Product and packaging design, and design thinking on commercial problems
- Stage gates, governance and cycle time
- Technical oversight on complex formulation and process work
- Product lifecycle management systems
Research and development
- University and research institute partnerships
- Grant and research and development tax strategy
- Applied research translated into commercial products
- Technical depth without carrying it on the payroll
Customer co innovation
- Joint development projects with major foodservice and retail customers
- Innovation days, ideation sessions and category roadmaps
- In the room when next year’s range is planned
- Briefs that start with you
Supply chain, operations and capital
- Process design, equipment selection and commissioning
- Capital investment cases and return on investment
- Automation and process improvement
- Supplier development and sourcing
- Yield, changeover and specification problems
Regulatory and compliance
- Quality management systems and certification, including SQF and BRC
- Customer specific compliance programs for major retail and foodservice groups
- Regulatory compliance across domestic and export markets, including FSANZ, FDA and market specific requirements
- Labelling, claims, ingredient declarations and artwork approval
- Quality system alignment across sites and suppliers
Sustainability
- Strategy, roadmap and targets
- Carbon reduction and energy optimisation
- Packaging sustainability and circularity
- Waste reduction and upcycling
- APCO compliance and climate reporting
Mergers and acquisitions
- Technical, operational and innovation due diligence
- Formulation, process, quality systems and supplier assessment
- The recommendation not to proceed, where that is the answer
- Integration of products, formulations and specifications after the transaction
- Integration of development, technical and process systems across the combined business
AI and decision intelligence
- Where AI pays in a manufacturing business, and where it does not
- Acceptable use policy, risk assessment and governance
- Platform evaluation and selection
- Training, and adoption measured after it
- Better planning, quality and cost decisions from data you already hold
Process, systems and people
- Documented processes that anyone in the business can follow
- Project and product records held in one place, built into the company ERP
- Team design, role structure and career pathways
- Capability building, mentoring and training across technical and non technical teams
- Governance, review cadence and clear ownership
- Capability that stays when someone leaves
My approach
Understand the system
Start inside your data and how the business actually runs, not with a view formed from outside it.
Work alongside your people
Your team holds most of the answers and stays in the work, so what gets built belongs to them.
Connect the dots
Across disciplines and departments, where the pattern sits that nobody inside has the vantage point to see.
Decide together, then deliver
I help you weigh the options and choose, then set out the path to execution and stay with it.
Previous and current engagements
* Described by the project rather than the client. Client identity and commercial detail are withheld under confidentiality obligations.
Collaborations
University and industry partnerships built over fifteen years. A funded external pipeline gives a manufacturer research and design depth it could never justify carrying on its own payroll, and it works in both directions.
Sixteen years of collaboration across two departments. Functional grains research with the food science group, and fermentation research with biotechnology, both run as co funded projects with doctoral candidates attached.
Alongside the research: industry partner affiliation, co funded doctoral scholarships, active supervision of research candidates, guest lecturing in the food science department, and a standing internship and graduate intake.
Eleven years applying design school capability to commercial problems, principally packaging solutions and design thinking brought into product development.
The partnership produced a packaging solution taken from concept through industrial design, prototyping and consumer testing into tooling and manufacture, patented in Australia and internationally.
Waste upcycling and food waste circularity research, connecting industry practice to national programs and turning a disposal cost into a commercial product.
A rolling program bringing food science graduates from several universities into live commercial projects, with alumni now in senior technologist, development manager and innovation roles across the industry.
Collaboration during my doctoral research on genomics and proteomics work in food biotechnology.
About
I have spent twenty plus years in manufacturing, across innovation and product development, technical and operations, sustainability, and more recently AI. I work with chief executives and senior teams to solve complex problems, lead the work end to end, and build capability that stays in the business.
My foundation is in food engineering and science, with a doctorate in biotechnology and biological sciences, patents, peer reviewed publications and postdoctoral research behind it. I still supervise industry based doctoral candidates. That is why the technical work and the commercial work do not sit in separate rooms.
I founded Innovaera in 2025 to make that level of capability available without the cost of a permanent executive hire. Alongside the advisory practice I am building an AI decision platform for manufacturers, launching under a separate brand.
Background
Patents and research
- Australian and international patent, bacteriocin polypeptides and uses thereof, WO 2016176729
- Australian and international patent, packaging and dispensing design developed with a university school of design
- Postdoctoral research fellow, RMIT University, including the first in house genome sequencing undertaken there
- Industry supervisor to doctoral candidates on co funded research projects
Selected publications
- Fermentation of youlk, an Australian native root vegetable, using defined lactic acid bacterial strains. Foods, 2026
- Green wheat freekeh, evolution from traditional cereal to sustainable future food. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 2025
- Fermented vegetables, their microbiology and impact on gut microbiota and overall health benefits. Food Reviews International, 2025
- Molecular mechanisms and antioxidant effects of Latilactobacillus sakei and related strains. Foods, 2025
- Golneshin et al. Draft genome sequence of Lactobacillus plantarum strain A6, a strong acid producer isolated from a Vietnamese fermented sausage. Genome Announcements, 2017
- Golneshin et al. Complete genome sequence of Lactobacillus plantarum strain B21, a bacteriocin producing strain isolated from Vietnamese fermented sausage. Genome Announcements, 2015
- Further research published in peer reviewed journals across food biotechnology and environmental science
Speaking and industry
- Industry conferences, panels and forums on innovation, sustainability and food biotechnology
- Guest lecturing in food science at RMIT University
- Industry engagement on functional grain positioning with national nutrition bodies
Start a conversation
If you have a decision that needs evidence behind it, a capability that needs building, or a technical problem that has outgrown the team you have.