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Wine industry awarded by the National Science and Technology Forum
Winetech (Wine Industry Network of Expertise and Technology) received an award in the category "Corporate organisation over the last ten years" from the NSTF (National Science and Technology Forum). NSTF is the most representative body of Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) stakeholders in South Africa.
Ten individuals and three organisations were honored for their outstanding contributions towards scientific engineering and technological development at the ninth NSTF Awards Gala dinner where the awards were presented by the Minister of Science and Technology, Mosibundi Mangena.
Winners were selected from 70 nominations. According to chief adjudicator, Dennis Hunt, these winners demonstrate that South African SET is on a par with global standards, but more importantly, that great innovation is only really achievable through people.
The NSTF motivated the award to Winetech as follows: "When a business case for transformation and deregulation of the wine industry was put forward in 1996, it was realised that for the industry to be globally competitive it would require a sound technology base and that South Africa was far behind. Winetech was established as a vehicle for facilitating and financing research in the industry and transferring resultant technology to its stakeholders. This unique partnership between industry, government and providers of education and research was thus formed as a "virtual" organisation with presently only three employees, but sustained by the interaction of more than 150 representatives from the stakeholders on a voluntary basis, to manage the programmes through a system of committees. Winetech has earned an enviable reputation demonstrated by the growth achieved by the industry."
Commenting after receiving the award, Jan Booysen, executive manager of Winetech, stressed the point that the wine industry should be applauded for its vision to establish Winetech with the objective to coordinate research, technology-transfer and training in the wine industry.
Winetech is one of the business units of the SA Wine Council, the representative body of the South African wine industry. The wine industry funds Winetech by means of a statutory research and development levy paid by producers. Winetech also received funds for technology development and transformation from the South African Wine Industry Trust for a number of years.
Winetech funds are being used to leverage government funds from the National Research Forum (NRF) through THRIP, from the parliamentary grant through the ARC and from Universities.
Presently Winetech’s research/knowledge partners are mainly the ARC (in particular Infruitec-Nietvoorbij at Stellenbosch) and Universities, particularly different departments within the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at the Stellenbosch University.
According to Booysen Winetech will keep on striving to stretch scarce research money in their search to optimise science to the benefit of all peoples in the vine- and wine industry which is in essence a high technology and highly competitive international industry.
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