Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, has launched the second round of its Australia-Singapore Venture Exchange Program (VEP) – Future Food 2.0. Applications for interested agrifood businesses close 8 December.
The VEP is a three-month opportunity aiming to support startups and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage with the world-class food innovation ecosystems in Australia and Singapore, and access complementary research capabilities to accelerate industry development.
Opportunities for research collaboration, attendance at premium events, venture building, business acceleration, local market knowledge sharing, coaching and mentoring are offered to participants of the program.
Key focuses of the Future Food theme include:
- exploring collaborations to stimulate food and future protein industry growth, and the acceleration of sustainability and food nutrition.
- generating new, world-leading knowledge and technology in food and future proteins that can be translated into marketing insights, commercial projects, new companies and development for the agriculture and food industry
- building food and future protein scientific capability for both countries that addresses major national challenges.
Participants will have access to world-class R&D facilities and collaboration opportunities with leading scientists in Australia and Singapore, receive coaching sessions identifying potential research collaboration and value chain opportunities, and attend premium events such as AgriFutures evokeAG in Australia and the FHA-Food & Beverage trade show in Singapore.
They will also participate in networking sessions with cohort peers and key ecosystem stakeholders, and engage with specialist providers of legal, marketing, and commercialisation.
The VEP aims to generate research and commercial ties between Australia and Singapore by providing startups and SMEs access to each country's agrifood ecosystems to advance future food innovation. Expression of interest applications can be found and submitted here.
