Advocates for folding the nation's biggest state science
company into its smallest university say it will offer
billion-dollar payoffs over the next decade.
Lincoln University chancellor Tom Lambie said the university
was looking at merging with AgResearch - which specialises in
research related to pastoral farming - to form an "enhanced"
institution which would be among the world's top five
land-based universities.
"That's going to have significant benefits for the
institutions and for agriculture in general," said Mr Lambie,
an organic dairy farmer.
"In a 10-year time-frame, there's a billion dollars worth of
added value annually that can be added to the agricultural
community."
Staff were told of the proposal early today, and
consultations were now underway on creating a new university
with a combined revenue of $230 million and assets of $485m,
which was expected to attract additional revenue of $50m a
year.
The leaders of the two institutions said there were big gains
to be made in "unbelievable" synergies in education, research
and in extension - the transfer of technologies into the
wider economy.
"New Zealand is facing a serious financial crisis - we've got
to earn our way out of it, and it is the land-based
industries which are going to do that," AgResearch chief
executive Dr Andrew West told NZPA.
In just one sector - improved forage for livestock - superior
ryegrasses and clovers could produce more milk and meat from
the same areas of land.
And by enabling AgResearch scientists to contribute to the
education of people entering the sector there would be a big
lift in technology transfer.
Lincoln's vice chancellor, Professor Roger Field said he
expected significant growth in numbers of post-graduate
students assigned to research projects on the AgResearch
campuses in the Waikato, Palmerston North, and Dunedin.
But it was not yet clear how the new entity would be
structured: technically crown research institutes (CRI) such
as AgResearch "may" pay a dividend to their Government
shareholder, but no such dividend was demanded of
universities, even when some, such as Lincoln, were already
earning nearly 20 percent of their income from commercial
activities.
"Is it going to be a university, is it going to be a CRI, or
a new type of beast altogether?" said AgResearch chairman Sam
Robinson.
Asked what would happen to the Government's stake in
AgResearch, and whether the Crown would end up owning half a
university, Mr Robinson said he was not sure.
He did not expect any constraints on the big programme of
genetic engineering research by AgResearch, which was seeking
regulatory approval for a wide-ranging development of
high-value proteins in GE milk from a variety of livestock.
"I personally think genetic modification is a tool which will
add value to NZ agriculture."
Overall, Mr Robinson expected the merger to be fiscally
neutral, with potential merger costs of $2.5 million balanced
by a similar annual saving in costs for the new university.
And the leaders of the two institutions made it clear today
they would want to extract all the available taxpayer
funding.
The new university's access to Government monies through the
Foundation for Research Science and Technology might partly
depend on whether it was defined as a science company or a
university.
After consulting staff and stakeholders such as shareholding
ministers and science funding agencies, the Agresearch board
and the university's governing council would decide over the
next two months whether to recommend to government a full
merger.
