Food & Textiles Group

Food & Textiles Sections

Objective

To develop products and technologies that will help pastoral industries deliver carpets, textiles and livestock-derived food that meet global consumer needs. To create sustainable, beneficial developments and testing services aimed at stimulating demand for New Zealand’s animal fibre and textile industry value chains.

Why we are here

There is an increasing need for novel solutions to improve management, monitoring and assurance along the value chain - from on-farm production through to on-shelf product. At the same time, consumers are demanding products that meet their specific lifestyle and genetic make-up.

Accordingly, an increase is expected in the number of new niche companies providing specialist products such as active sportswear, smart and technical textiles, or food designed to provide health benefits to specific people.

The increasing wealth of information on the human and livestock species’ genomes provides greater opportunities than ever before to identify and develop novel products from livestock species that meet specific consumer needs.

What we do

• Apply science and engineering to the world of carpets and textiles for fashion and industrial applications.
• Apply understanding of ruminant nutrition to develop nutritional guidelines and solutions for improved productivity.
• Provide product and process development, and evaluation services, in the fields of fibre, textiles and related consumer and industrial products.
• Formulate mitigation strategies for greenhouse gases produced by grazing ruminants.
• Provide technology and technical services to the global carpet and rug sector, focusing on wool-based floor coverings.
• Develop human health therapeutics derived from livestock products, including wound-healing products from deer velvet and antimicrobials from milk and rumen microbes.
• Offer sophisticated R&D and product development services in the fields of engineering, bio-materials, and textiles-based niche medical and health applications.
• Develop added-value foods derived from livestock products, including nutrigenomics - those that meet specific nutritional requirements of human genetic conditions.
• Provide expert textile- and carpet-related technical consultancy, information, and education services, and manage key relationships with other technical authorities around the world.
• Provide tools to assist with quality assurance to meet customer expectations for desirability and safety of animal products, such as measurement of desirable food characteristics, diagnostic tests, predictive models and traceability tools. Such tools will improve decision making, efficiency and product quality of value chains and can also help resolve biosecurity issues.