EDAC Innovation - A Buzzing Success

EDAC innovation - a buzzing success

Press release, Christchurch, NZ. 4 December 2003 - With recent sales breaking multi-million dollar targets and triple award recognition for achievement and product innovation EDAC Electronics is onto a roll.

The Christchurch based electronics design firm has been inventing and developing niche products for partners that are proving to have significant international market potential. Sales revenue and staff count for the company has doubled in the past financial year and is predicted to double again in 2004.

The reason behind the success is innovative biotechnology, strong relations with partners, excellent understanding of market requirements and determined Kiwi ingenuity.

Just last month EDAC Electronics and business partner Geoff Willacy of beeFORCE Limited were highly commended at the Westpac Hi Tech Awards in Auckland for the Most Innovative Product and Biotechnology Company of the Year Awards.

Star product attractions that are launching the company onto the world stage include biotech devices such as the recently highly commended beeFORCE bee pollinator technology that dusts bees with pollen and increases their efficiency as nature's pollinators in kiwifruit orchards.

The beeFORCE unit is a revolutionary targeted biochemical delivery system for the global horticultural industry that is generating significant market interest and sales.

It is an environmentally friendly alternative to spraying that is programmed to deliver small volumes of beneficial products to the entrance of a beehive so that honeybees can take them up as they fly off to visit flowers. Field trials have already proved successful with selected Trichoderma for the control of sclerotinia infection that plagues kiwifruit, and fire blight inoculant for apples and pears. Other biological agents are also being researched, making bees a forceful army against bacterial and fungal attack on crops.

EDAC Project Manager Henry Bettle, who himself earned a 'highly commended' for this years Young Achiever of the Year category at the Westpac Hi Tech Awards, said: "The beeFORCE unit, which has only been recently launched commercially, has proven to increase fruit and crop size while reducing rejects. Results show that the units are also yielding revenue increases of NZ$10,000 to $20,000 per hectare in kiwifruit orchards as a result of using beeFORCE."

"With increasing aversion to widespread aerial spraying the possibilities for beeFORCE is unlimited, as the bees target the plants directly with minimal affect to the environment and themselves. The horticultural industry is really excited about it," he said.

In the past thirty years there have been some significant developments in the kiwifruit industry, and beeFORCE would rank as one of them to have a major impact. beeFORCE is a new technological advance in kiwifruit, and the most exciting development with possibilities well beyond kiwifruit pollination.

Trials are currently underway in Australia and New Zealand to improve fungal control in orchards. Further distinct possibilities for beeFORCE include the delivery of products or substances that will be active against the Varroa bee mite, which would be of tremendous benefit to beekeepers.

EDAC and beeFORCE are working jointly to take the technology to the international market. To protect the IP patents have been filed for all major crop-producing areas around the world and will include not just honeybees, but all types of bees and insects.

About EDAC Electronics

EDAC Electronics Limited (www.edacelectronics.com) is a privately owned company based in Christchurch New Zealand that invents and develops advanced electronic products for unique applications around the world. Recent innovations include remote monitoring and control equipment such as a frost monitor, silo alarm, and the revolutionary beeFORCE technology, which uses bees to deliver pollen and other beneficial products to orchards.

The company works with government, private and educational research organisations and inventors to produce world-class innovations, and with customers and business partners to develop and commercialise products for local and international markets as far a field as Norway.

In November 2003 EDAC Electronics and partner beeFORCE Ltd were highly commended in the Most Innovative Product of the Year and Biotech Company of the Year award categories of the Westpac Hi Tech Awards (www.hitech.org.nz). Project Manager Henry Bettle was also highly commended for the Young Achiever of the Year award.

ENDS

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