In January some of team Agri-TechE had the pleasure of heading to the Tees Valley to the HQ of CPI (The Centre for Process Innovation).

CPI kindly hosted the first in-person meeting of our newly refreshed stakeholder group that brought together a selection of our membership to share their on-the-ground perspectives as a valuable guide for our work and future strategy.

CPI is an independent tech innovation centre and a founding member of the UK Gov’ts High Value Manufacturing Catapult. As a process development and scale-up business they exist to help businesses transform exciting scientific concepts into industry-ready, commercial businesses.

Their portfolio includes developing novel agricultural products including fertilisers, pesticides, biostimulants, seed coatings, plant and animal probiotics. They are increasingly important as a national capability to help scale up material such as biologicals, as these products become more available their ability to scale and formulate for agricultural uses is critical.

Our stakeholders are a blended group from across the membership – tech companies, farmers, researchers from across the UK. With us, they come together for peer-to-peer learning, sharing and hearing insights, and having candid discussions about what’s needed for the industry. We use their reflections and expertise to inform and shape our strategic activities.

As well as the stakeholder meeting, the group were lucky to take the group on a tour of CPI’s facilities at their Wilton site to see process design and scale-up and bioprocess development.

Big thanks to CPI for hosting – especiialy Jenny Readman Alex Smith