Plant & Food Research win award for innovative commercial deal

Plant & Food Research were among the winners last night as the third annual KiwiNet Research Commercialisation Awards were announced in Auckland, celebrating success within New Zealand’s universities and Crown Research Institutes.  Around 250 people attended the Awards reception to bring together the people and technologies changing the research commercialisation landscape in New Zealand. 

Plant & Food Research were named winners in the PwC Commercial Deal Award for a business innovation around the commercialisation of Wakefield Raspberry. The deal involved working in partnership with US partner, Northwest Plant Company LLC (NWPCO) to revolutionise the traditional plant variety commercialisation model from transactional plant sales based royalties to a participation in commercial success of the new cultivar.  

The judges were impressed how Plant & Food Research put “a very clever business model around some clever science which maximises return to New Zealand”.

In accepting the award, Plant & Food Research Business Development Manager Andrew Mackenzie pointed out the fact that the Plant Varieties Team had “made a habit of commercialising things in different ways” and shared the team’s philosophy that “innovation in our science should be matched by innovation in our business dealings.” In his eyes there was “nothing sadder than having a wonderful science innovation put into a pedestrian path to market”. 

Plant & Food Research’s Nigel Larson also accepted the Commercialisation Collaboration Award as part of The Biopolymer Network Limited (BPN), a research company focused on producing bio-based products and process for commercial applications formed through a collaboration between Plant & Food Research, Scion & AgResearch.

A full list of the winners and finalists can be found at https://www.kiwinet.org.nz/Awards/Awards2015