UC spin out company named one of Deloitte's Fast 50 rising stars
A University of Canterbury (UC) spin out company, Veritide, has been named one of Deloitte’s Fast 50 top five rising stars in New Zealand.
Through Veritide, UC has turned its research into commercial outcomes that are beneficial for the economy and has delivered solutions to community needs. UC retains a small of Veritide.
Deloitte and New Zealand Trade & Enterprise’s rising star awards complement the Deloitte Fast 50. The top five rising star companies are recognised as early-stage, innovative, high potential companies.
Veritide has a breakthrough platform technology that rapidly and reliably detects bacteria and spores. Its technology, founded on research initiated in the United States and developed at the University of Canterbury, has already been successfully manufactured and sold as a hand-held anthrax detection device for first responders.
Veritide’s aiming is to solve the food industry’s greatest problem of how to detect and control the outbreak of food pathogens such as salmonella, campylobacter and E.coli.
Director Dr Stephen Hampson said Veritide was committed to developing its technology for the food processing industry allowing real-time detection of the most significant bacteria. The cost and damage to a food company from an outbreak could not be overstated.
``Veritide's equipment will provide increased confidence and control over its food processing activities. Current methods of testing that require the sending of samples to food microbiology laboratories provides a lengthy wait of days before food safety results are known,’’ Dr Hampson said.
Key primary industries in New Zealand including meat, seafood and dairy processing all show significant demand for the Veritide technology with the company working with partners in each of the sectors.
Recent UC research associate Dr Scott Choi has joined the Veritide engineering team developing the bacteria detection devices for the food industry.
Dr Choi said he was attracted to Veritide because of its technology, the challenge of solving a significant problem for the food processing industry and the opportunity to build on his previous research.