Collaboration is an inherent component of food research undertaken here. Many of the key initiatives have multiple partners including State agencies, academics and companies – and many of the discoveries associated with food research are automatically near to market and ready for commercialisation.
Research collaboration brings many benefits, eg helping to deal with reduced resources and the potential to share both staff and equipment in order to get the most out of every euro. And within Ireland collaboration means strong linkages between State support agencies, companies and the third level sector.
University College Cork has a long-standing research relationship with Teagasc, and agencies such as Enterprise Ireland work to link companies and academics with a view to pursuing research, says Prof Paul Ross, head of the food research programme at Teagasc. He cites as an example a two-year-old project to develop new kinds of cheese products.
“In this project we are developing 300 forms of cheese and expect 30 to emerge as potentially commercial,” he says. “Teagasc and UCC have a long history of research in cheese and this is in all aspects of cheese. We have been very successful in working with the cheese companies to do this.”
The collaboration is important for other reasons, he believes. “This is a programme on a research pipeline. It is important because a development programme on its own won’t be sustainable without the research pipeline.” It also represents a model however “for extracting economic dividends” from research activity.
The food research programme employs about 200 research academics and students and works with 250 companies a year, Prof Ross says. “These are real research collaborations, not just phone calls.” The programme has a budget of about €15 million with half of this from the State and half from research income won by the researchers.
Having the programme means that companies benefit as well. “A lot of smaller companies wouldn’t have the resources to set up their own research and development section and we would help them, companies of all sizes in the agri-food industry.”
One of the flagship collaborations is Food Health Ireland, set up in 2008 to do “milk mining”, searching for useful probiotic substances in milk that could be used to create innovative new products, says Dr Keith O’Neill, director of life sciences and food commercialisation in Enterprise Ireland. It recently completed its first five years and has been given a second five-year funding commitment. Total investment to date has reached €40 million and partners include Carbery, Kerry Group and Glanbia on the industrial side and UCC, University College Dublin, Dublin City University, University of Limerick and Teagasc. There are also plans to bring in NUI Galway and Maynooth and also Dairygold.
“It really is an all-Ireland approach to introducing innovation into the food industry,” Dr O’Neill says. So far Food Health Ireland has isolated 70 milk compounds that may have important health benefits and they are working through each of them for possible commercialisation with industrial partners. The large collaboration has worked so well that planners are thinking of expanding its remit in milk mining to dairy technology and the meat sector.
The international dimension is never far away in research collaboration in the food sector. The potential here comes up for discussion at the end of this month when the Ireland UK Food Business Innovation Summit takes place. The Minister for Agriculture and Food Simon Coveney and his UK counterpart Owen Paterson will jointly open the summit.
Teagasc’s assistant director of research Declan Troy organised the event. “We are looking at the big [world] challenges and how they can be converted into commercial opportunities here,” he says. Challenges include things such as rising obesity, feeding the world, sustainability and environment protection.
Another collaboration is Foodworks which involves Enterprise Ireland, Teagasc and Bord Bia. “We have great raw materials so we add value to them,” says Troy. The three State bodies went on a “trawl” for high potential start-up companies in the agri-food sector, ones that had the potential to create companies, deliver jobs and pursue exports. It identified 10 or 12 with very high potential. Enterprise Ireland provides financial and business supports, Teagasc provides research help and Bord Bia works with the client company to market what it has to offer.
More of these kinds of collaborations should arise because of the Government's Food Harvest 2020 document, a strategy for the food industry here. "Food Harvest is actually the bible," says Troy. "You really do get an aligned effort at developing the industry."