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A little over two years ago when University of Canterbury cleantech spinoff company Zincovery won the prestigious C-Prize competition, nobody would have fully anticipated the journey that was about to unfold. Now with several million dollars in venture funding in hand and a solid commercialisation pathway planned out, the future looks bright. Zincovery, founded by […]

It has been almost a decade since soulful musician and devout vegan foodie Flip Grater returned to New Zealand after a whirlwind global career in the entertainment industry. Now she’s on a mission to impact the world in a different way. Grater Goods was established to fill a void in the market for high quality […]

Imagine leaping from student life directly into your own food manufacturing startup serving a high growth consumer market. Britteny Bryan and Nick Harlow, who met at the University of Canterbury, did exactly that. Having converted to veganism, the young couple spotted a gap in the market for tasty, pre-cooked vegan meals. A few years on, […]

Over a decade ago MacDiarmid Institute founder, renown physicist and technology entrepreneur the late Professor Sir Paul Callaghan proclaimed that we needed to make New Zealand “the place where talent wants to live”. Results of the 2022 Food, Fibre & Agritech (FFA) Supernode Challenge suggest we have reasons to be optimistic about attracting top talent […]

As a child, Andy Park says he was always interested in drawing, building and breaking things apart. It is hardly surprising then that he eventually discovered the answers to many of his questions through the world of science. Lately he’s been applying his ever-curious mind to decarbonisation of the construction industry. SeaBoard is a fire-resistant […]

Blackbird Ventures’ recent visit to ThincLab was all about the well known venture capital firm getting to know our founders. But it was also about community building, collegiality and learning. After numerous false starts thanks to lockdowns and alert level changes, we finally managed to pull off our long awaited event hosting the New Zealand […]

Currently holding around $10 billion in equity across companies, including some of Australia’s early unicorns, plucky Blackbird Ventures is arguably now Australasia’s largest and most active venture capital firm. We are thrilled to be hosting the Blackbird team at UCE/ThincLab on Wed 25th May. The company has taken a founder-centric approach to every investment deal […]

Carbon credit trading has sometimes been criticised as counterproductive to the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions on the basis that markets enable large emitters to avoid any meaningful change of behaviour. However trading markets, technologies and legislative frameworks are evolving steadily to answer such questions. Carbon trading and offsetting remain an important part of […]

Climate change and environmental concerns are never far from our minds these days and especially so for science researchers within our universities and Crown Research Institutes. So this year’s Food, Fibre and Agritech Supernode Challenge has a special focus on primary sector sustainability. As global interest in waste mitigation and production of alternative foods with […]

Joining a band can be a lot like doing a startup company. So there must be a little bit of bluegrass moonshine in the blood of banjo picking, guitar strumming Sean Whitaker who has played a part in developing a number of homegrown food and beverage brands in recent years. Now he’s advising companies within […]