Website provides access to bioresource processing technology

For immediate release
1 July 2014

Website provides access to bioresource processing technology

The Bioresource Processing Alliance’s (BPA) new website provides a gateway to some of New Zealand’s top scientists, engineers and economic specialists in biological resource processing.

The BPA, an alliance between four of the country’s national research providers – AgResearch, Callaghan Innovation, Plant & Food Research and Scion, aims to expand New Zealand’s export opportunities by adding value to biological resources. Many of these resources are low value secondary by-products and waste streams from primary industries.

According to the Chair of the BPA Board, Garth Carnaby, the website will enable businesses and investors to tap into some of the best technical facilities, research and processing knowledge available in the country.

“Our aim is to add value to the secondary by-products from New Zealand’s agricultural, horticultural, forestry, marine and microbiological industries. We can use our collective expertise to help businesses reduce processing costs and utilise greater volumes of their primary resources to make a wider range of products. This could potentially mean a reduction in the volume of imported goods and reliance on petrochemicals, increased employment and the generation of less waste.”

Each of the BPA’s research partners has specialised science capability and infrastructure and is already actively researching ways to increase the value of biological waste streams. They also collaborate with a range of other research and industry partners nationally and internationally. This means investors can tap into the collective and multi-disciplinary scientific expertise and pilot plant facilities within the wider alliance network.

“Our new website will make it easier for businesses and investors to access a platform of enabling technologies, such as extraction, reconstruction and transformation, high value processing and deconstruction,” says Mr Carnaby.

“Once a new product has been proven at a laboratory level, its feasibility as a commercial investment can be assessed at pilot scale from within our database of pilot plants, along with other robust decision-making tools we have developed.”

The Bioresource Processing Alliance is supported by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment, and is able to provide co-funded research capacity for technical and industry development.

To find out more about the Bioresource Processing Alliance, visit: www.bioresourceprocessing.co.nz.

-ENDS-

© Scoop Media