By YOKE HAR LEE
A sixth of the New Economy Research Fund's annualised $11.25 million will be spent on private sector research.
Sir Angus Tait's export-oriented Tait Electronics company in Christchurch will get the largest chunk, but Auckland-based Pacific Lithium, the software company Xsol, and the Christchurch-based research firm Applied Research Associates NZ have also attracted funds.
The universities emerged the biggest winners of the new fund, accounting for some 70 per cent of the new money being given for new research.
Information technology, gene technology and materials science are the principal areas where the fund's money will be invested.
Most of these projects are expected to run three to four years, with the expectation that start-up companies will be formed based on the research, said Dr Steve Thompson, the chief executive of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.
The fund, designed by the former National Government to kickstart New Zealand into a knowledge-based economy, is aimed at research which will lead to the budding of new enterprises. It drew some 200 applications requesting money in excess of $100 million.
Out of a total of $36.25 million, some $25 million will be "migrated" from the public good science fund. Funds available amount to some $11.25 million.
John Ball, chairman of the New Zealand High Tech Council, representing companies in the high-tech business, said it was encouraging to see four successful private companies.
"We need more private-sector companies with better quality proposals, the issue being we are competing with people who have been competing for funds in the last 10 years."
Dr Rick Fright, co-founder of Christchurch based Applied Research Associates NZ, said the support from the new fund would help his company retain some graduate students who would have otherwise gone overseas. The company is involved in developing three-dimensional-data-processing scanning technology, and late four-dimensional processing technology.
John Blackham, founder of the New Zealand Intellectual Foundation (NZInc), a charitable trust dedicated to providing catalysts for change, said he still thought the whole process of selection was flawed.
This is despite Xsol, a company in which he has shares, being a successful bidder to the fund.
Mr Blackham said: "The whole thrust of it is more of the same old people in the same old system. The selection process is made by the same people applying the same mindset to the evaluation process."
He said he would rather see a Silicon Valley model whereby the private and public sector co-invest in picking out which high-tech research projects to support.
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