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Posts Tagged ‘Christchurch’

Pivoting In Zinc

Monday, December 5th, 2022

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 Associate Professor Aaron Marshall and chemical engineer Jonathan Ring, began life as a research project looking at how to extract zinc from toxic industrial waste. Encouraging early laboratory results led the pair to initially focus on galvanised steel manufacturing as a target customer. But it was soon found that the cost of recovery would exceed any economic benefits. This led to some further customer discovery work revealing that remediation of scrap metal furnace dust was a major environmental problem needing solving and that the Zincovery process could be the solution.

This opened the door to a potentially much larger global market, with Zincovery technology offering a lower energy and lower CO2 output means to recovering valuable zinc from industrial smelters all over the world. Unsurprisingly, at a time when the spotlight is very much upon solving environmental problems, the company’s recent capital raise was oversubscribed at $3 million and included participation from investor luminaries such as Icehouse Ventures and Climate VC Fund. Zincovery has now grown to a team of seven (see photo), and is hunting for a business development guru and an additional research scientist as it works on delivering the solution on an industrial scale.

Jonathan Ring says having a supportive board helped during their pivot. Developing a new strategy and communicating to your stakeholders is critical, he says. “There is always a possibility of failure, but it is also important to explain why you are optimistic of success.  Then go ahead and execute on your strategy whilst keeping a level head.”  He adds that, “ThincLab was our first sounding board for business strategy and ideas before we had our formal board of directors in place. It is critically important for founders to get external advice, to help grasp the bigger picture.”

ThincLab delivers business advisory to growth stage companies and research based ventures with the support of regional economic development agency ChristchurchNZ. Apparently backing the local innovation ecosystem has begun paying off. Startup Blink recently announced that Christchurch has risen into the top 250 startup cities globally. On the current trajectory, the city could eventually be New Zealand’s top destination for high tech startups. That would be a significant milestone in a world where competing for talent and capital is incredibly challenging.

Image credit: Jonathan Ring

 

Climate Tech A Hot Topic

Thursday, October 14th, 2021

A recent report commissioned by Callaghan Innovation sheds light on the opportunities to lead in the commercialisation of technologies that mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and it delves deeply into how New Zealand “climate tech” businesses can succeed on the global stage. New Zealand Climate Tech For The World articulates the global context and invites the local innovation ecosystem to rise to the challenge. At 209 pages, it is quite a big read. ThincLab Canterbury research commercialisation advisor Paul Spence summarises some of the key points here.

There a numerous ways of measuring the “innovativeness” of an economy, but levels of venture investment tend to receive an overwhelming level of reportage compared to other indicators. Climate tech sectorial innovation is no exception. The numbers are certainly staggering. The Economist recently reported that $500 Billion in capital was invested into the “transition economy” in 2020 alone. That comes as no surprise because whilst climate tech is a huge economic opportunity driven by a critical set of environmental problems, the capital requirements of the sector are substantial. So indications in the Callaghan report that climate tech innovators in New Zealand have raised only a tiny fraction of the investment funding compared to other comparable “small, advanced economies” must be concerning.

Furthermore, historically most funding has been raised by later stage businesses, with Lanzatech essentially being the only substantive project during the last few years. That company has raised over $400 million in capital to date, in its bid to capture industrial waste gases and reconvert into fuel stock. But Lanzatech has been domiciled in the United States since 2014 because the local investment landscape at the time was not ready. A lot has changed since then. How can New Zealand leverage the vast amounts of global capital currently pouring into this space, retain intellectual property and create value for the local economy?

For starters, the report cites the lack of multi-national companies residing in New Zealand as a brake on raising investment and developing partnerships. So this requires a sustained and intentional global engagement by the innovation community and a strong focus on solving key problems for offshore partners. The report goes on to illuminate the three stages of the entrepreneurial journey – R&D/commercialisation, financing and connection to demand. An assessment is provided on how the New Zealand innovation system is delivering in comparison to other small advanced economies such as Israel, Sweden and Finland. The report illustrates that New Zealand consistently lags behind the others in the commercialisaion of climate tech. Predictably however, we do a lot better when a similar analysis is done on agriculture and food sector innovation, illustrating that there is certainly ability to improve.

The report is at pains to point out that other small advanced nations that have successfully launched innovative climate tech industries have done so through a wider process of investing in ecosystems of innovation, rather than backing companies one-by-one. In New Zealand we have a legacy of “picking winners” rather than building capacity across industries. This is slowly beginning to change however. A good example is our government’s recent laudable enthusiasm for promoting an aerospace industry. In fact “sustainable aerospace propulsion” gets a mention as a promising new vertical.

So what other responses are needed to take advantage of the global opportunities in the transition economy? The report suggests a greater emphasis on cross-sector collaboration. A return to nationwide clustering efforts is recommended in order to better utilise knowledge spillover effects. A much stronger focus on researching and growing global demand-side through strategic relationships is also flagged. “New Zealand, as a small, innovative economy that is geographically isolated from much of the world, must use innovation resources efficiently”, say the report authors. Increasing the visibility and attractiveness of the local ecosystem to global players seems instrumental. As a starting point, the report suggests low emissions agriculture (including agritech digitalisation) and geothermal energy as initial focus areas where there is already considerable local expertise. Although these are certainly not the only growth areas.

The report suggests that some technologies are remaining undeveloped in the lab because researchers are being discouraged by too many barriers to success. Obstacles include lack of business knowledge, scarcity of follow-on research funding and time constraints on busy academics. Tailored business advisory support from ThincLab Canterbury can help researchers and entrepreneurs overcome these hurdles and unlock real value. Funded by Callaghan Innovation and ChristchurchNZ, ThincLab does not charge fees or take equity. There’s never been a better time to become an environmental entrepreneur.

Contact ThincLab Canterbury today for support with your Climate Tech venture.

ThincLab: A University Based Incubator Creating Unique Value

Monday, September 13th, 2021

ThincLab is Canterbury’s dedicated Founder Incubator supporting growth stage businesses with global ambitions. ThincLab sits alongside the University of Canterbury Centre for Entrepreneurship (UCE) within the UC Business School. Located on Level 6 of the wonderful Rehua Building on the UC campus, ThincLab is the only Founder Incubator located within a New Zealand university setting. ThincLab is uniquely positioned to provide capability building for founders and their teams, connection to industry experts and agencies and international pathways to growth and investment.

New firms face many challenges due to a lack of networks, resources, knowledge and experience. Consequently these companies face a higher risk of failure than more established firms. Business incubators are designed to help young companies to improve survival rates, maximise growth potential and gain new knowledge. In the case of university based incubators, companies in the programme receive the additional benefits of knowledge spillovers from intellectual property derived from academic research plus ready access to a stream of graduate talent.

Founder Incubators are specially selected business support providers co-funded by Callaghan Innovation, a publicly funded agency that provides research and development services and is involved in cultivating New Zealand’s innovation ecosystem. Founder Incubators welcome applications from any growth stage business within their region. Because of the support from economic development agency ChristchurchNZ, there is a particular focus on assisting high potential companies from within Christchurch. ThincLab also works with ventures emerging out of the University of Canterbury or from the Crown Research Institutes near the city that align with the regional Supernodes Strategy.

Kea Aerospace is a fine example of a company that has leveraged access to capital and talent through its involvement with ThincLab. Company co-founder Mark Rocket was one of the original founders of Rocket Lab, but started his own aerospace venture in 2020 with the help of Dr Philipp Sueltrop who had recently completed his PhD in Electrical & Electronic Engineering through the University of Canterbury School of Engineering. The company is developing a very high altitude unmanned vehicle for acquiring high resolution photographic images. Known as the Kea Atmos, the aircraft can fly for months at a time powered by solar energy.

Luke Campbell and Lucy Turner were still studying at the University of Canterbury when they entered the UCE Summer Startup Programme with their telecommunications startup VXT. Coaching support from ThincLab Growth Programme advisors assisted the company to raise a $600,000 seed funding round. Then the company began acquiring enterprise customers and building a young team of recent UC graduates to assist with developing the business further. VXT was subsequently accepted into Startmate, the pipeline accelerator for Australasian venture capital firm Blackbird Ventures.

Case studies such as these illustrate how a university based incubator such as ThincLab is strongly positioned to bring a unique and powerful range of resources and knowledge to bear for participant companies.

You can find out all about our people, our mission and the programmes we offer on the new ThincLab Canterbury website.

thinclab.nz