Interest builds in Adelaide food production hub, SA Government announces Parafield Airport site

Local companies have already expressed interest in a food production hub that will be built at Parafield Airport in Adelaide's northern suburbs, its management says.

The SA Government announced a food production hub will be built at Parafield Airport. (Supplied: C P Group)

While on a country cabinet visit in the Barossa Valley region on Sunday, the South Australian Government revealed its planned northern suburbs food park would be built on 40 hectares of vacant land at the southern end of the airport.

The Government has so far spent $2 million on the project and said it would commit more as it sought to create job opportunities for retrenched Holden workers.

Premier Jay Weatherill said he believed food manufacturing and the food and wine sector in the Barossa region were areas where there was potential for jobs growth, particularly for Holden workers.

"This is the growing sector of the South Australian economy and there are great jobs in the food industry, well paid jobs that are often going to use the skills that workers have also had in the automotive sector," Mr Weatherill said.

"So tradies that have used their skills on plant and equipment in the automotive sector may be able to use their skills on the plant and equipment in the food manufacturing sector."

The airport's managing director Mark Young said several food businesses already had operations near by and some companies had expressed an interest in moving to the hub.

"We're about to go into a detailed planning and design development phase," Mr Young said.

"That will take a little while and through that process we will also be starting to identify those early movers that want to take advantage of this project."

Mr Young said the site offered several key advantages for local food companies.

"It's about bringing like businesses together who can leverage from each other but also leverage from common infrastructure so cold stores, common power, common road systems, even common labour pools," he said.

"It helps lower the overall cost of the operation and most importantly keeps those businesses self-sustainable."

But Opposition employment spokesperson David Pisoni was doubtful food production would create many jobs.

Mr Pisoni said Bureau of Statistics figures showed the food production sector was struggling.

"In agriculture, forestry and fishing, which is a big part of regional South Australia of course, there's been a reduction of 9,700 jobs just in the last quarter," Mr Pisoni said.

Source: ABC News, 19^th October 2015
Originally published as: Interest builds in Adelaide food production hub, SA Government announces Parafield Airport site