Silver Fern clinches biotech deal
Silver Fern Farms has signed a long-term blood protein joint partnership with a world-leading biotechnology company.
New Zealand has been ranked #3 in the recently released Scientific American World View Scorecard, which measures the biotech innovation potential of 54 countries.
Using seven categories including productivity, IP protection, intensity, enterprise support, education/workforce, foundations and policy and stability, the study benchmarks each countries’ potential on an annual basis.
New Zealand has surged in the rankings from #18 in 2011 to #3 in 2015. Dr Will Barker, CEO of NZBIO says its members have always maintained New Zealand is a great place to grow bio-based businesses.
“It is fantastic to be recognised in such a prestigious international study," Barker says.
“Taking top spot in several subcategories, including 'most life science PhD's per capita' and 'best political stability' is great. However, there is room in NZ for significant improvement in both public and private R&D spending and investment, which is very low compared with the other top 10 countries.”
Commenting on the comparative strength in the Enterprise Support and Policy and Stability categories, Baker adds, “These results clearly show the infrastructure for supporting New Zealand’s growing bioeconomy is evolving nicely. However, while the study uses wide ranging data to measure potential it fails to examine local legislative challenges such as our HSNO Act, which affects a large portion of our biotech companies.”
The country’s 4200 commercial fruit and vegetable growers will vote from May 14 on a new HortNZ levy.
Meat processor Alliance Group is asking farmer shareholders to inject more capital in order to remain a 100% co-operative.
A vet is calling for all animals to be vaccinated against a new strain of leptospirosis (lepto) discovered on New Zealand dairy farms in recent years.
Dairy
Rural banker Rabobank is partnering with Food Rescue Kitchen on a new TV series which airs this weekend that aims to shine a light on the real and growing issues of food waste, food poverty and social isolation in New Zealand.
Telco infrastructure provider Chorus says that it believes all Kiwis – particularly those in the rural areas – need access to high-speed, reliable broadband.
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