Earle Creativity and Development Trust co-founder Dick Earle with Precycle NZ founder Nelson Harper. Photo / Judith Lacy
Earle Creativity and Development Trust co-founder Dick Earle with Precycle NZ founder Nelson Harper. Photo / Judith Lacy
It has been a mammoth month for Palmerston North engineer Nelson Harper.
The founder of Precycle NZ received $30,000 from the Earle Creativity and Development Trust for resource recovery exploration, and he also won The Factory’s entrepreneurialism competition, Innovate.
Precycle is developing new recycling technologies to transform non-recyclable materials intonew construction materials.
Harper is looking at creating sustainable construction materials from high-fibre waste.
He has a background in chemical engineering, and is also helping businesses understand what they can recycle.
As the Innovate winner, Harper and Precycle will now enter The Factory’s accelerator programme, and will tool up to pitch to the angel network led by the Manawatū Investment Group.
Harper was the only recipient of an Earle science and technology grant.
Six visual arts grants were made.
Andy Irving received $7000 for In Plain Site. Using 3D drawing and spatial mapping, he will create art that examines sites and buildings people wouldn’t normally consider significant.
Examples are the Spark building in Main St East, which he describes as a goliath of a structure, a brutish Trojan horse.
Tessa Ma’auga received $5000 for Movements From Pearl Rivers.
Her practice draws on Chinese traditional craft and Chinese cosmology, and is the culmination of years of research into the connections that flow between southern China and Aotearoa.
Ma’auga, whose ancestors are from southern China, says art has the potential to foster harmony and promote understanding.
Her exhibition will include motorised sculptures and contributions from locals with southern Chinese ancestry.
Sea Cliff, an oil painting by Keila Martin. The Palmerston North artist is a recipient of an Earle Creativity and Development Trust award.
Keila Martin received $10,000 for Rewilding the Margins.
She is interested in painting the rich diversity of plants that surround Palmerston North and rewilding - when nature is left to its own devices.
Deano Shirriffs received $10,000 for Lilac Wine, a long-form visual experiment that will culminate in an exhibition. It will question the idea of what makes the artist.
Phillip Andrews received $8000 for his spatial augmented reality project Highlight 2022.
Charleigh Te Peeti received $8000 for Whatu by Charleigh Collection. She is applying customary Māori textiles, materials and whatu (weaving) into contemporary fashion.
Jeff Fox is chairman of the Visual Arts Selection Committee, which consists of Karen Seccombe, Neil Wallace, Catherine Russ, and Raemon Rolfe.
The committee received 17 applications requesting nearly $300,000, with $48,000 granted.
John Higgins is chairman of the Science and Technology Selection Committee, which consists of Russell Brebner, Nick Gain, Steve Flint, and Neil Wilson.
Dick Earle, who founded the trust in 2013 with his wife Mary Earle, said it was moving ahead in exactly the way they wanted.
He joined Massey University in 1965 and became the world’s first professor of biotechnology.
Mary, who died last year, is considered a pioneer in New Zealand engineering.
Earle said he hoped his former colleague, Richard Garland, would become the face of the trust after he was gone.
Now in its 11th year, Innovate took eight Manawatū entrepreneurs on a 10-week journey, culminating with a solid business plan being pitched at a sold-out event.
“The quality of the seven pitches was outstanding,” said judge and Morrison Creed partner, Jason Driscole.
“Every team had identified a specific problem and developed clear viable solutions that people would be willing to pay for.”
Tim Wixon, leader of BNZ’s technology industries portfolio, and Britta Fromow, an intellectual property lawyer with James & Wells, rounded out the judging panel, who had a tough ask.
“It’s the first time in the history of the programme where seventh place and first place were within points of each other,” Driscole says.
“We had to make a call, and scalability and disruptiveness won on the night.”
Cutly received a mentor award, giving the team the ability to tap into the three judges’ expertise. Cutly is challenging the traditional shaving routine with natural and irritation-free solutions.
The 2022 Innovate programme began in July with submissions. Over two stages, the Innovate team selected eight finalists who then completed a 10-week business acceleration programme at The Factory in Palmerston North.
