Marketing focus for Waikato institute

By Philippa Stevenson

agricultural editor

A new research and education institute at Waikato University aims to help sharpen the country's focus on food marketing rather than agricultural production.

Yesterday, the university's management school and AgResearch said they had formed a joint venture to set up the New Zealand Institute of Food Marketing and appoint as its founding director, Professor Oswin Maurer, an Austrian.

The school dean, Professor Mike Pratt, said the institute's name was deliberately chosen - and its educational messages and research agendas would be tailored - to give impetus to the refocusing on food marketing instead of farm production.

The joint venture had recognised a gap in the research and knowledge base and was seeking to fill it, he said.

The institute, which has been started with $100,000 in seeding money from the university, aims to have $1 million worth of industry contract work and Government research grants, and be returning a profit, after three years.

Professor Pratt said it was intended institute researchers would speak out on all food industry-related issues, and be "pushing the agenda of the need to add value by understanding the marketplace."

Professor Maurer, who comes to Waikato from the University of New England in Australia, has significant international experience in both academic research and as an industry consultant.

In his consultancy work he was "always coming across annoying New Zealand products" such as New Zealand lamb which European product could not displace.

He wanted the challenge of coming from the other side, he said.

The institute has the support of Dairy Group and Zespri International and Professor Maurer will meet other major companies this week before taking up his appointment next month.