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Food sustainability is becoming a huge topic of conversation worldwide and hungry investors are waking up to the growth possibilities as we track towards 10 billion mouths to feed by 2050. Investment research company PitchBook tracked almost US $40 Billion in venture capital flow into food tech in 2021, double the previous year’s figures. But […]

Hannah Airey is what you might call a “necessity entrepreneur”. Driven by a need to provide for her family and a desire to support others who needed a helping hand, she started baking and selling gluten free and vegan goodies. Bad Ass Brownies was born. Now after graduating with honours from the Start Me Up […]

Global headwinds such as resurgent interest rates and pandemic induced supply chain difficulties may have led to a cyclical downturn in share price fortunes for listed greentech companies lately, but the rivers of private capital pouring into the sector continue unabated. Industry commitments to reaching net zero carbon by 2050 are growing, bolstered by the […]

For food exporting nations, such as New Zealand, where large scale agriculture remains a huge part of the economy, the environmental cost of greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient runoff pollution has become a focus for action. In the meantime global populations continue to grow as does the demand for food. Agritech innovation is increasingly becoming […]

The global economy is transforming in the face of both a lingering pandemic as well as the many challenges of the climate crisis. Existing business models are being disrupted and completely new fields of endeavour are opening to entrepreneurs. For example, we already know that climate tech may be the single biggest economic opportunity of […]

In a world where creativity, community and collaboration are increasingly the basis for new innovation, it has been a joy to witness the next generation of entrepreneurs emerging through the University of Canterbury Centre for Entrepreneurship (UCE) Summer Startup Programme. ThincLab Canterbury advisors have got to know many of the teams, in our capacity as […]

A serious injury on a job site almost ended single parent Joseph Chapman’s career as a tradesman. But the Start Me Up accelerator programme got him off a benefit and on track to build something new. Jointly facilitated by Ministry of Awesome and ThincLab Canterbury, the Start Me Up programme aims to support beneficiaries into […]

Belonging to a military family in the United States meant growing up in dozens of different locations for Maggie-Lee Huckabee. But arriving in New Zealand at the turn of the millennium to take up an academic post at the University of Canterbury must have seemed like an entirely new beginning altogether. Two decades down the […]

Nau Mai, Haere Mai. Welcome to the ThincLab Canterbury monthly update. Congratulations Maggie-Lee Professor Maggie-Lee Huckabee became interested in speech pathology and the processes of healing from brain trauma whilst recovering from a head injury herself many years ago. Now as director of the University of Canterbury Rose Centre for Stroke Recovery, her amazing research […]

Anti-viral drugs incorporating protease inhibitors were always likely to be a key piece of weaponry in the arsenal against Covid-19. The medication has its origins in research performed almost 150 years ago, sharply illustrating why we should respect the continuum of science. Enzymes are proteins that act as biological catalysts. Enzymology is a branch of […]