News & Media
Innovation Collaboration Day 2024
Another successful Innovation Collaboration Day!
BY EMMA GREGORY
In September 2024, BASF in the UK was delighted to organise this year’s Innovation Collaboration Day, welcoming pitches from start-up and scale up innovators interested in discussing their technology in enzyme and agritech innovation. The UK team were joined by BASF sector experts and BASF Venture Capital colleagues.
We’d like to thank everyone who took the time to get in touch with us. It has been inspiring to hear from those who shared their innovations and we have enjoyed exploring opportunities for collaboration with us at BASF.
Pitches were held over two days. In the area of enzyme innovation, the BASF team was looking to establish partnerships with companies that possess well-developed technologies, which will contribute to our journey towards achieving net zero emissions. Enzymes have an important role in our everyday lives, for example by enhancing the nutrition of the food we eat or as ingredients in products like detergents but they are also part of a growing movement towards a more biobased and sustainable economy.
The agritech innovation panel was seeking potential collaboration with innovators, including start-ups and R&D incubators within universities and research institutes who are focused on agriculture and the farmed environment. BASF has a long-standing interest in finding new solutions that help growers to produce more yield with sustainable and balanced operations.
One of the pitching teams commented, “The exchange of ideas and feedback truly underscored the exciting future that lies ahead for our innovations in agriculture,” whilst another added, “We are always keen to engage with industry partners to discuss emerging biotechnology trends and challenges. The Innovation Collaboration Day was a great opportunity to meet several commercial and technical leaders from BASF.”
One of the BASF Innovation Collaboration Day expert panels
Sustainability Manager, Lucas Quintanilha reflected on this year’s event, “It was really fantastic to have so many companies present their innovations to our expert panels, particularly as they had sustainability at their heart. At BASF, our ambition is to be the preferred chemical company to enable our customers' green transformation. By engaging with innovators, we are able to identify new partners and areas of collaboration to support the technologies that will make our ambition a reality.”
You can read more about the application process here.
A word from the candidates
We asked our shortlisted candidates what they thought of the event and why they had entered this year's Innovation Collaboration Day.
Take a look at some of their responses below.
All photographs and quotes are given with the participants' consent. By publishing the photographs and quotes, BASF acknowledges the teams that were shortlisted for Innovation Collaboration Day 2024. The inclusion of this material does not guarantee an ongoing partnership with BASF.
For media enquiries or to repurpose this article, please contact Emma Gregory at emma.gregory@basf.com
Published 20 December 2024