The Science and Innovation Group of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MSI) announced the successful bidders into the High Value Manufacturing and Services research fund this afternoon (and yes, I realise that readers like short, punchy sentences but what can you do?) Well, most of the successful bidders. The email alert has 31 projects being awarded $92m but when I get to the website I can only find 30 projects worth $86.9m. Who got the other $5.3m I wonder?[1]
But looking at the numbers without the missing funding a few interesting trends come out. The big winners were those you might expect to do well in research for the High Value Manufacturing sector. The two leaders were Auckland University at $5.0m per annum ($18.8m all up) and IRL at 4.8m pa ($17.6m). What did surprise me a little, and maybe it shouldn’t have, was that the University had the big projects and the CRI the Smart Ideas. That must bode well for the Advanced Technology Institute as IRL ceases to be a CRI.
Of the other Universities, Otago did well with $3.7m pa ($14.4m all up) in Smart Ideas and a couple of big projects.[2] Overall the Universities did better with Smart Ideas funding than the CRIs, 12 vs 5 and vice versa with the projects, if not so clearly, at 5 vs 7. That seems to fit with the idea of the funding schemes but perhaps it is a little simplistic to draw sweeping conclusions with such small numbers. I’ll stop there before I get into trouble.
Scion was the next best CRI with $2.7m pa for a couple of big projects in the biomaterials area. Because these projects were long as well as big the total funding for Scion was third at $15.2m. If you think about what Mr Joyce said about the loss of jobs at the Norske Skogg newsprint mill, it seems that biomaterials and the biobased economy are favoured by Government at the moment. The award of $3.7m to the only non CRI/University successful bidder, the Heavy Engineering Research Association, for Geothermal Power Generation Technology may also indicate a shift into ‘alternative’ technologies. A shift back into alternative technologies really as Governments in the past have seen their role in funding the future not just the immediate needs of industry. And there is a lot of funding from this round for Manufacturing. Services; not so much. How is that ‘weightless economy’ going?
MSI must be pleased to have the bidding round out of the way so it can focus on core business. And I really would like to know what happened to the $5.3m.
