On Thursday 23 April, Anglia Innovation Partnership, the campus management organisation for Norwich Research Park, welcomed a delegation from the 39 North AgTech Innovation District in St Louis, Missouri, USA.
The 39 North AgTech Innovation District is home to a similar cluster of plant science and pharmaceutical research organisations and businesses, as Norwich Research Park. The visit coincided with the announcement by Anglia Innovation Partnership of the launch if its ‘BioTransitions’ programme, set up to initially to focus on supporting ‘Seed-to-Series A’ companies operating in the agri-food biotech sector. The first sponsor of the programme was unveiled at a reception for the delegation as Bayer, a global leader in health and nutrition, that has two campuses in St Louis near the 39 North Innovation District. Bayer will be supporting the programme with a three-year sponsorship.
The delegation from St Louis flew to the UK on the inaugural direct flight from the city’s airport to Heathrow airport.
The ‘BioTransitions’ programme will help companies with their investment strategies, intellectual property (IP) and patent applications, field trials, access to advanced technology platforms, marketing strategy, network of contacts in academia and industry, plus access to the expertise of the sponsors of the programme, including Bayer.
Roz Bird, CEO of Anglia Innovation Partnership, said, “The connection with Bayer and St Louis is part of the work we are doing to develop the role of the campus in the global agri-food market. Much like Norwich Research Park, St Louis is a global hot spot for agri-food biotech research and commercialisation activity so we are looking at opportunities to work ‘ecosystem-to-ecosystem’, pooling our collective strengths and considering new opportunities for collaboration to help solve some of the world’s major challenges in agriculture and climate change.”
Dr Phil Taylor, Director of Ecosystem Development at Bayer’s Crop Science division, said, “We are delighted to announce our involvement as a sponsor of the ‘BioTransitions’ programme and to reinforce the collaborative work that can develop between our cities’ clusters over the next few years. These programmes matter as they combine leading research and development capabilities with in-depth knowledge and ingenuity from experts to accelerate the delivery of agricultural innovation to farmers. We look forward to creating an environment to support early-stage companies to scale and grow their future solutions for impact.”
To view the full gallery of images from the event, please visit our Event Gallery page.
