It is by no means a Silicon Valley – but it is New Zealand’s own agri-tech version of it; a concentrated hub of agricultural innovation. Centrally placed among 17 hectares of Hamilton farmland this high-tech park, at first glance, looks like nothing more than a bunch of office buildings – but don’t be fooled as it is so much more.
Simply ingenious
Waikato Innovation Park, owned by Innovation Waikato Ltd, is the growth hub of New Zealand’s agricultural technological innovation. It is the home for a melting pot of science, technology, and business – research fired up and continually being catapulted onto the international field; thanks to the entrepreneurial ingenuity of the park’s associated companies both on-site and off.
The park’s CEO, Derek Fairweather, says the vision behind the park is simple; to use our claim to fame – farming – to generate wealth. “Our vision is to have a blend of agri-tech and agrifoods companies creating wealth in New Zealand and in country with our offshore partners, through what we are world famous for.”
Derek says, this one-of-a-kind park is already making a huge impact on the international pasture based dairy industry.
Going offshore
“We now have 50,000 cow farms in progress overseas that use New Zealand farming technology,” he says. “Farms offshore are being built with the ‘best-of-breed’ NZ technology and systems.” This assures offshore agribusinesses are interested in taking up what the park has to offer, that it delivers world class quality products with world class sustainability – all at a globally competitive cost.
The company has taken advantage of its strategic relationships and partnered with, the global market, to accelerate growth of resources and businesses. This growing export pipeline is making New Zealand world-famous for its pasture based technological ingenuity.
Which is why Waikato Innovation Park continues to strive to connect with businesses that are the “best” in Agri-tech. “Together these companies work to create an export pipeline worth over 100 million dollars,” Derek says.
Making its mark
The pipe-line is the invaluable by-product of a park that has done more than just provide a physical space for companies to grow in, but also offers the support and opportunity to develop and make a mark in a hugely competitive industry.
Waikato Innovation Park can facilitate access to funding for growth and expansion. “As a TechNZ Regional partner, we assess and deliver research and development grants.
“We have worked with innovative agri-technology companies and helped to grow them into valuable exporting businesses. We have recognised that financing research and development and funding capital to commercialise or adapt novel value creating technologies are key ingredients for success.”
The whole package
These opportunities are all presented in an even prettier package through the modern commercial and laboratory facilities on the Waikato Innovation Park’s attractive rural setting. It is a physical cluster of 50 companies which range from start-ups to multi-national centres of excellence – a collaborative range of brilliant minds, all in one spot.
There is a central hub, housing an upmarket café, a shared reception space, causal break-out spaces for both staff and visitors alike, private meeting rooms and larger open spaces perfect for business or social functions.
High-speed internet connections, in a state of the art server capacity, makes the Core Facilities Building the place to make global connections.
Budding innovation
The Innovation Park is a true story of New Zealand home-grown success – it was established from a public-private partnership to enhance Waikato’s economic growth by strengthening innovation in the region’s world leading agri-tech and agBio sectors.
Derek says the idea for the park came out of the Raukura agResearch centre – a 50 year old cluster founded on world class research that provides good quality innovation to farmers, meeting the needs of farmers, supplying processing businesses, and offering bio security and environmental agencies a better understanding of the environmental and biological systems on-farm, as well as educating around the practical application of technology to farming processes and the impacts of pastoral farming on the environment.
From here Innovation Waikato ltd, which developed the idea for the park. Derek says many of those who have invested in the Raukura campus wanted a commercial base for the technology that would generate revenue for New Zealand businesses.
“The original idea was promoted to several agritech companies,” Derek says, and the rest is history.
Research base
Having such a strong connection with agResearch, the park’s location couldn’t be more perfect; the Waikato is already seen as the country’s leading location for science and research with approximately 1,000 research scientists working in Hamilton, “the city has one of the highest ratios of scientists per capita in the world”.
In addition the Waikato boasts of numerous institutions such as Wintec, DairyNZ, LIC, the University of Waikato and AgResearch – who are all important to the Innovation Park.
Today looking at tomorrow
Since its opening in 2004 the park has grown from the 19 original companies to the present 50. “It is a blend of entrepreneurs and multi-national centres of excellence,”
Derek says.
When full, the Innovation Park is forecast to have 15 buildings hosting 300 businesses contributing an estimated 3,000 jobs to the city.
Derek who has been at the park since the get-go says it’s exciting to see where the future is headed.
Catch the Train
For anyone drawn to the attractive opportunities that the company offers, the park is willing to talk. Every year they head to the National Agricultural Field Days – to be held mid June at Hamilton’s Mystery Creek – where Derek says, “he and his team will put on our backpacks and go shape a deal,” to anyone with value in making large tracts of land, productive, globally competitive and sustainable.
The field day, which promises to be the largest agribusiness exhibition in the Southern Hemisphere, is one place Derek says they can connect with businesses. The field days are often the ultimate launch platform for cutting edge agricultural technology and innovation – people who’d fit right into the vision of the park.
Derek says its focus will be business to business; picking up some of New Zealand’s best brands for deployment offshore. “As we mature as a business there is a huge demand for good farmers and agritechnologists to come onboard.”
He says they are looking to develop skills, not just agri-tech, but global skills. “Like Spanish,” he says in reference to the huge farming market in South America.
“It is certainly an opportunity for those people who are looking for an adventure deploying what NZ is famous for to developing agricultural countries.”
The offspring
Innovation Waikato Ltd, which owns the park, has three subsidiaries that have grown out of the park. Using the park as the driving force, the New Zealand brand in agriculture and biotechnologies is making its stamp on the globe. “We lead a consortium of technology and service providers who are targeting new market segments by offering turnkey, large scale agricultural solutions.”
NZFIW – New Zealand Food Innovation Waikato Ltd
Primarily funded by Innovation Waikato Ltd it focuses on new ingredient product development.
The network is a government initiative to encourage innovation in the food sector – with, of course, the ultimate goal of increasing exports. It has four centres around New Zealand, each with a completely different complementary focus to each other. The Waikato hub’s focus is on dairy – with plans of expanding to meat in the future.
The first stage of development for the Waikato centre is an independent development dairy processing facility at the Waikato Innovation Park – a multi-purpose, NZ Food Safety Authority export certified, nominal ½ tonne per hour powder spray drying facility.
It is taking in milk (and other ingredients) and evaporating it, and drying it in the following three step process:
1 – Milk Receiving and Storage
The milk reception allows the unloading of milk tankers and milk storage (chilled) of up to 80m3 volume. NZFIW has plans for future milk separation, standardisation and batch tanks to be added to enable the processing for the manufacture of infant formula and skim milk powder.
2 – Evaporation and Drying
At present on-site there is A Tetra Magna TVR evaporator which has been designed to concentrate whole milk from approximately 13% TS to 52% TS. Design consideration in this phase has also been made for future production of infant formula and skim milk powder. Pasteurising also occurs in the evaporator. A high pressure pump and homogeniser will allow for 2 stages of homogenisation and the flexibility to adjust product specifications at the concentrate injection stage.
A very flexible Tetra Magna Wide Body drier is installed. 57 product groups – hundreds of individual products – have been manufactured on Tetra Pak wide body driers, making this an ideal choice for this development facility.
3- Powder handling and packing
A vacuum transport system conveys the powder from the sifter to the Packing Line. The product is packed into a high spec 25 kg gas flushed packing/sealing machine. With the wide range of products being manufactured, the facility considers protecting customer intellectual property as a high priority and will have systems in place to ensure IP is well protected.
The centre will be operated as a contract manufacturer and is a 100% owned IWL subsidiary.
Dairy SolutioNZ
New Zealand is a recognised world leader in low cost farm production systems. Waikato Innovation Park acts as the central partner in a commercial consortium of established agricultural producers and suppliers with Dairy SolutioNZ (NZ) Ltd.
This association combines the vast experience, technology and delivery capabilities of the AgBio cluster, providing a leading edge in the industry with low cost, sustainable farm production systems.
Dairy SolutioNZ design and build -or convert- large scale farm operations that adopt leading low cost technologies and systems as well as provide support and education for ongoing farm operations. A feature of its offering is the “Best of Breed” turnkey solutions
for large scale land development and technology deployment.
The Dairy SolutioNZ (NZ) Ltd team works with its clients to develop and design a commercial model suitable for both parties.
The benefits are substantial; landowners can transform land use and its returns through the application of knowledge, skills and technology sourced from Dairy SolutioNZ. “Conceptual business cases indicate a 25% (minimum) return on assets for dairy development in most developing nations with high natural rainfall. Larger scale projects are forecast to achieve still greater returns through economies of scale.
“The Dairy SolutioNZ (NZ) Ltd participants have demonstrated continuous improvement to farm performance of approximately 2.5% per year in NZ. Our customers/partners benefit from future performance improvement, derived from the NZ community of researchers and developers.”
Beef SolutioNZ (NZ) Ltd
This subsidiary offers a package much the same as for Dairy Solutionz, but for red meat. Beef solutioNZ is a farm pasture based beef technology system for large offshore clients. It provides export deals by combining the vast experience, technology and delivery capabilities of the red meat processing industry in combination with leading edge, low cost, sustainable farm production systems.
“Industrial agricultural land development utilising the latest technology and systems will deliver improved performance and profits. Corporate farmers, meat processors, and regional and national bodies are all recognising the need to maximise both the quantity and quality of production. Beef SolutioNZ (NZ) Ltd offers the pathway to achieving export success in offshore Beef operations”
The Park at-a-glance
- A physical network of widely-recognised expertise and companies primarily focused in Agri-tech, and Agrifoods sectors
- A culture of collaboration and innovation between research, entrepreneurs and business
- A Core Facilities Building providing business infrastructure ready to accelerate and develop new business
- The Tetra Pak building as a more permanent location for large and multinational businesses
- The Piazza building, currently in design, for larger multinationals and mature agribusinesses
- Onsite export dairy ingredient processing and product development
- Shared services to allow businesses to focus on their core processes, services and products
- Set in 16.8 hectares of pasture among large trees for business, commercialisation and product development functions
- A regional hub of networks to provide resources to innovation
Waikato Innovation Park
Ruakura Rd
PO Box 9466
Waikato Mail Centre
Hamilton 3240
T (07) 857 0500
F (07) 857 0501
W www.innovationwaikato.co.nz
