IFT President Downs Named Director of Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator

Jan. 24, 2023

Chris Downs will continue to serve as IFT board president.

Chris Downs, board president of the Institute of Food Technologists, has been named director of the Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA) Trailblazer program funded by the Australian Government Dept. of Education and hosted by The University of Queensland. He is an Australian.

The FaBA Trailblazer program, which is part of Australia’s $150 million effort to boost growth and innovation in the food and beverage industry, is expected to help attract more than $1 billion in investment and generate more than 15,000 jobs across the Australian food and beverage sector.

Dr. Downs has more than 30 years of experience in the agri-food industry as a scientist, innovation leader and executive. He was general manager for Crop and Food Science at the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. He also previously led the Food Program at Australia’s national science agency, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

He will continue to serve as IFT board president, a role that he assumed in September 2022.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.