Mei Yong, the founder and CEO of MyPlantCo, has become a standard bearer for collaboration in food and beverage product development.
Having spent more than 20 years in the FMCG space, building multiple successful brands – and a winner of the 2025 Food and Beverage Accelerator Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award – Yong is now pioneering sustainable oat-based technologies that could transform how the world consumes the grain.
The company is working to transform staple high-protein, high-fibre formats that include oat-based alt-rice, noodles and pasta.
Yong was a guest on the latest episode of Women Transforming Food, a monthly podcast from Inside FMCG and G100, which explores the inspiring journeys of women shaping the future of the Australian food industry.
She shared with Amie Larter, CEO of Inside FMCG’s publisher Octomedia, and co-host Angeline Achariya, Asia Pacific chair of the Food Systems Innovation and Resilience Wing at G100 Mission Million, about a major ‘aha moment’ which changed the trajectory of her oat project.
Shortly before the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, Yong was looking to get into a new brand, and develop a new commodity.
“We looked at every grain: Wheat, lupins, red lentils, things that we grow in WA. Everything at that point in time was pointing towards oats. We really wanted to look at innovating in this space, at where we could add value, and we wanted to move out of breakfast.”
They set about looking at new formats and started developing pasta and noodle varieties all in-house. But something was wrong.
“We realised that with a smaller team, there was quite a lot of research and market insights that had to happen. I was waiting on some critical feedback from the team, and I realised that it was going too slow and we needed to piggyback off of a larger, broader team that had spent enormous amounts of time on research in oats that were playing in the space already.”
They discovered the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre (AEGIC), an organisation set up to commercialise proprietary oat technology, and which had already pre-developed IP in oat rice, noodles and pasta.
“That was a new beginning for us. We showed early interest in that IP, and that was really pivotal to our growth.”
Yong recognised the value of collaboration early on. With a small team and multiple brands, progress was always going to be slow, doing it alone.
“I realised that I was never the smartest person in any room and I really needed more smarts around me. I needed more people who championed their fields. We chose a partner, the Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA), to help us. They were technical experts in accelerating our growth in the technical spaces of governance, compliance and further technical research.”
FaBA brought to the table a team dedicated to market insights. “I realised that when you collaborate, you are inviting others to be part of your vision. That doesn’t have to be perfect or completely ready. You’re bringing people in because you need help.
“When you accept that, it brings a lot of peace and trust-building. You get people into a stronger alignment and vision. That’s where you can really drum up fantastic results together.”
AEGIC is a research body championing the grains industry and what we can do differently. As a private business, MyPlantCo focuses on commercialisation. So the collaborative focus was on bringing the two organisations’ research teams together to bring ideas to life. “For us, it’s setting the right frameworks, understanding that at the beginning, we put a strong emphasis on trust, on relationship building and the IP proprietary system and the management of all those things. Having those clear agreements of ownership upfront and identifying those risks is really important. That way, you can avoid bottlenecks that come later on.
In collaboration, understanding and respecting what the other party brings to the table is important, she says, because you brought them on board for their expertise and experience – not to tell them every single detail of what needs to be done. Opening up allows the two parties to better frame decisions and ensures the partner is connected to the mission.
“We don’t have all the skills in this state. We identified early on that we needed technical experts, not just their minds, but we also needed specialist equipment, millions of dollars of equipment that weren’t sitting in our state.” So the company formed a partnership, including a $5.6 million co-investment, between MyPlantCo, the WA government and Queensland food and beverage accelerator, FaBA.
“We need to understand that we don’t need to work in silos. If we want to send something out of Australia, like our oat rice, for example, and represent this innovative product out of the country, we need to work as one. That means that if that technical knowledge and technical team sit outside WA, then you need to tap into it.
“My advice for leaders here is that you need to recognise the purpose of collaboration as a partnership. You’re bringing people on board with clear goals and a focus. That’s why we focus on a workshop style, so we can engage in more learning together. Those big ideas and dreams need more people at the table to create the change required.”
Developing a product that would be a substitute for rice, MyPlantCo needed to understand how people eat rice. “We need a product that cooks like rice and eats like rice. That way, we’re going to get more adoption from consumers.”
FaBA has two teams: One focused on market insights, the other a technical group available to accelerate and help MyPlantCo. The market insights team helped Yong’s people understand how the Japanese consume rice. For example, do they like texturally firm rice? Do they like it to look very white? Do they like their rice packaged in a certain way? Are they cooking in a rice cooker, or are they putting it in the microwave?
Those insights proved invaluable as the product development journey continued. The collaboration also illustrates the value of teams working together in ensuring projects can move forward at an optimal pace, with minimised errors and misconceptions that might stall concepts in their tracks.
“It’s very important,” says Yong.
“We jump on and work with teams that are set up already that do this for a living, so we can actually understand and fast-track our understanding to make better decisions.”
- Listen to the podcast to hear Yong’s advice on how to take the first steps towards collaborating and building partnerships, and her views on how widespread adoption of collaborative innovation could transform the food industry globally.
