Australia's Research and Development Corporations (RDCs)
Welcome to Explore RDCs, an overview of Australia's RDC landscape and provides clear pathways for startups and scaleups, businesses, and international stakeholders to engage with rural industries. Explore to better understand how your research, startup, or scaleup might align with industry needs.
Explore RDCs
Research and Development Corporations (RDCs) are trusted partners in Australia’s rural R&D system and play a unique role at the intersection between industry, government and the research community. They enable government and primary producers to co-invest in research and development to drive innovation and benefit industry and regional communities. There is a total of 15 RDCs with 5 Commonwealth statutory bodies and 10 industry-owned companies. Each RDC functions to service the needs of a specific rural industry or sector such as red meat, horticulture, eggs. An estimated AUD$825m is invested annually through RDCs. For every AUD$1 invested in agricultural R&D, an almost AUD$8 return is generated for farmers over 10 years.
On each page, you will find:
- Individual RDC information: Detailed pages of all 15 RDCs, from Commonwealth statutory bodies like AgriFutures Australia and the Cotton Research and Development Corporation, to industry-owned companies like Dairy Australia and Meat & Livestock Australia.
- Funding landscapes: Clear explanations of how RDCs are funded through industry levies and government matching, plus specific information about each corporation's funding opportunities and cycles.
- Strategic priorities: Up-to-date information on each RDC's current strategic focus areas, helping you assess alignment between your innovation and industry needs.
- Opportunities for engagement: Highlights programs, VC funds and innovation challenges run by individual RDCs designed to build capacity and source solutions to real industry challenges.
- Connections: Access to growᴬᴳ’s concierge service, where we can assist in connecting you with the right person within an RDC and understand your objectives.
5 Commonwealth statutory RDCs
10 industry-owned RDCs
What should you know about RDCs?
How are RDCs funded?
RDCs are funded primarily by levies which are paid when Australian agricultural produce is bought, exported, grown, processed or sold. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s collect levies and distributes these to RDCs to fund research and development that will strength rural industries.
The Australian government also matches expenditure on eligible R&D, up to 0.5% of the determined industry gross value of production.
All RDCs manage research and development services. However, some also undertake marketing activities which is funded by a marketing levy component.
Startups and RDCs
RDCs offer innovators a look-in to industry priorities and a connection to producers. They can also provide capacity building programs and funding opportunities that enable innovation to be scaled, adapted or trialed to address specific industry needs.
These priorities, programs, and funding opportunities and cycles vary amongst each RDC. It’s important to assess the use cases for your innovation and identify which industry it could be applied to.
From here, review the information regarding individual RDCs structure, priorities, funding and procurement related to the industry where your innovation is applicable.
SMEs, Corporates and RDCs
RDCs regularly partner with SMEs and corporate entities to facilitate research into key industry challenges. These partnerships are mutually beneficial to rural industries and the corporate entities as they often form part of Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER) or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies.
Partnership opportunities are usually associated with the RDC funding opportunities or calls for research. Corporates can partner with an RDC by matching funding into research which will be undertaken by third party organisation or university to address the key challenge or priority for the industry.
International stakeholders and RDCs
Despite location, challenges within agriculture are shared across continents. Australian RDCs have a growing appetite to better understand what solutions and research exists overseas and share current solutions that would help address challenges faced by international agricultural industries.
Opportunities to partner and work with Australian RDCs vary depending on the stakeholder group and RDC. It’s best to familiarise yourself with the strategic priorities of the RDC you are interested in partnering with.