From jerky to jam, and body wash to brittle, Seedlab Australia continues to help small businesses transform and scale into supermarket-ready brands, with its 2025 Impact Report revealing a collective $10 million in forecasted benefits for participating FMCG brands across Australia and New Zealand.

Now in its fourth year, Seedlab Australia has cemented its role as the country’s leading FMCG incubator, offering intensive education, expert mentorship and practical retail guidance at no cost to participants, fully supported by Woolworths.

Through its four core programs: Bootcamp, Cultivate, Nurture and Propagate, Seedlab continues to help bridge the gap between founder passion and retail reality, with remarkable results.

Over the past 12 months, Seedlab’s programs have supported more than 150 businesses with the following key outcomes in the 2025 report:

• Bootcamp supported 111 potential and new suppliers, helping benchmark their retail readiness and refine brand pitches, with a self-reported combined perceived program value of nearly $2.5 million over the next year.
• Cultivate, a five-month accelerator, guided 39 Bootcamp graduates to strengthen their supply strategies, packaging, forecasting, logistics, and more, with a perceived combined impact of over $2 million over the next year.
• Nurture, tailored for Cultivate graduates who become Woolworths suppliers, supported 30 businesses in onboarding and strengthening category communication, unlocking an average of $409,000 in added value per business over 12 months, when combined with Woolworths ranging. Many have also created jobs (average of 1.35 FTE roles each), launched new products, packaging formats, formulations, and picked up many industry awards.
• Propagate, a 20-week tailored program by invitation for current Woolworths suppliers, enabled 13 more established businesses to refine strategy, improve retail relationships through Seedlab mentoring, site visits and Category Manager meetings, among other targeted support and information.

For Seedlab Founder and CEO Dr. Hazel MacTavish-West, the results are evidence of what can happen when small businesses are empowered with real-world FMCG insights, trusted mentoring support and unique opportunities.

“Behind every metric in our report is a founder who has taken the leap, to build, to scale, to ask hard questions of themselves and their businesses, and to open themselves up to scrutiny, enabling growth. I’m particularly thrilled to see real jobs created, innovative products get shelf space, and confidence levels soar. These are the stories that show the potential of entrepreneurs when they’re properly supported with trusted advice,” said Ms MacTavish-West.

Mat Garthwaite, Founder of Mat’s Hot Shop, Australia’s “top” hot sauce store with gourmet selections from small-batch makers, further highlighted his takeaway as a Cultivate participant.

“I’ve changed the business completely, and we just had our first profitable month in such a long time,” said Mr Garthwaite.

With 55% of businesses entering the highly competitive Seedlab Bootcamp program being women-led, 24% based in New Zealand, and 5% as First Nations-owned, the program continues to attract a diverse range of founders.

As Seedlab looks ahead, the focus remains on unlocking the next wave of FMCG success stories, helping brands grow smarter, more sustainably, and in a way that creates value for customers, retailers and communities alike.