Business support
NorVicFoods invites agri-food businesses to submit an application for support to solve a specific innovation challenge.
Get support to innovate
As part of the venture, NorVicFoods projects (NVFp) will develop solutions to specific innovation challenges by drawing on academic expertise and intellectual property within the University. The venture will also include opportunities for driven, enthusiastic staff and students. Learnings from these projects will be used to secure support for other resources and to implement innovative solutions at commercial scale. Support might include:
- Arranging internships and work-based learning programs
- Providing relevant services in information and agricultural technology
- Arranging relevant services through national delivery partners and international collaborators
Benefits of collaboration
Collaborating with NorVicFoods through a project will give your company or organisation access to a broad range of the expertise and capabilities in the University of Melbourne, and specifically in disciplines that are relevant to the agrifood industry. This capability and expertise will develop solutions to maximise your business outcomes, and may include:
- Access to leading edge technology
- Managing innovation in-house
- Identifying, protecting and leveraging Intellectual Property
- Knowledge exchange techniques
- Securing resources for knowledge-based innovation
- Improving plant growth and development
- Improving animal growth and development
- Accessing agronomic expertise
- Expertise in animal and plant processing for food
- Food packaging
- Food marketing
- Food quality and safety management in long value chains
- IT applications for food value chains
- AI applications in food value chains
- Expertise in sustainable food production intensification
- Advice in adapting food production systems to climate variability and climate change
Eligibility
To be eligible for a NorVicFoods project, organisations must be:
- Companies or community organisations operating in the Hume region of Victoria
- Engaged in some aspect of the agriculture and food value chain, including export logistics
- Interested in incorporating new-to-the-organisation innovations into their business, especially digital innovation that adopts new science and technology
- Interested and able to host groups of student interns safely for a semester to work on and explore the innovation (expenses paid by NorVicFoods)
- Willing to have some aspects of the innovation project shared publicly with other members of the Hume agriculture and food community
- Willing to work with the University of Melbourne and its collaborators to document the outcomes of the project for reporting and teaching purposes.
Selection criteria and process
The University of Melbourne welcomes applications from eligible organisations and will utilise an Expert Panel to help assess the best projects for support.
Projects will be assessed against the eligibility criteria, and the project’s likelihood of returning significant benefits to the Hume region of Victoria, the degree of innovation involved in the project, alignment with the teaching and learning objectives of the NVFv, alignment with the University of Melbourne’s accelerated innovation objectives, and opportunities offered by the project to engage with the culturally and linguistically diverse community of the Hume.
NorVicFoods statements relevant to each of these criteria can be found in this FAQs document (PDF 236.4 KB), or are available upon request via contact-norvicfoods@unimelb.edu.au.
Feedback on unsuccessful applications will be provided, but the final decision will be made by the University of Melbourne team.