Wharf42 officially relaunches its website today. It’s great to be back!
Today we are also announcing our sponsorship of the $5,000 prize for the best New Zealand Bridge Hub Trans-Tasman Water Challenge Startup Entry. We are teaming up with our great friends at Zespri, who are sponsoring the major $25,000 New Zealand Bridge Hub Water Challenge Research Prize.
Water is our most precious natural resource. Its availability, its management and its quality are of critical importance to the human race. For the global agrifood sector, extreme weather events brought on by climate change have had a devastating impact. Australia has suffered from years of drought whilst in New Zealand, we have been experiencing both extended dry periods and damaging floods.
The Trans-Tasman Water Challenge, initiated by the Bridge Hub, a NSW innovation hub, and supported by both the Australia New Zealand Agritech Council and the New Zealand government’s Agritech Industry Transformation Plan (ITP), has been designed to bring together researchers and startups from both sides of the Tasman, focused on finding solutions to address these issues.
Across the ditch, many of Australia’s leading research organisations including CSIRO, AgriFutures Australia and the Universities of Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide are taking part. In New Zealand, applications have already been submitted from a large number of researchers and startups.
As well as the cash prizes, Wharf42 will work with ALL the startups who submit applications, post the Challenge’s completion. We are working with Callaghan Innovation to set up a series of online workshops which will cover off a number of key opportunities. Separately, we will activate the Wharf42 Insights Programme to provide relevant market intelligence data to assist the commercialisation of the submitted applications.
Finally, we are working with the Bridge Hub to identify opportunities to field trial and test solutions, on-farm, in both Australia and New Zealand. For New Zealand startups wanting to increase their offshore visibility, this Challenge offers an amazing opportunity.
We have extended the application close date for the Water Challenge to Friday 28 August. If you want to submit an application and help address this critical global issue, please go to www.waterchallenge.co
Wharf42 is delighted to be supporting this major Trans-Tasman initiative.
If you want to learn more about the ongoing development of the Wharf42 Insights Programme and other initiatives currently being kept under wraps, please sign up for our free Monthly Newsletter.