The company is the brainchild of Professor Jason Wargent, who is its Chief Science Officer. Wargent, from the Midlands in Britain, came to Palmy in 2010 for an academic teaching post in Massey University’s horticulture team. Within a year, the journey began that led to BioLumic, based out of refurbished Massey buildings on Palmy’s Dairy Farm Road.

The Factory, a Palmerston North organisation that helps entrepreneur progress their ideas, helped BioLumic start up in 2013. It now has more than 20 staff, a lab in California and crop trials in the American Midwest. Government and venture capital investment has seen the company raise more than $17 million to develop its potential.

While it is working across crop types, what really grabs people’s attention is its work in the medicinal cannabis space. A partnership with Helius Therapeutics sees BioLumic developing UV recipes exclusively for their use in New Zealand. Wargent says that cannabis as a crop has whole orbit of discussion around it, both in New Zealand and overseas. “From even a purely medicinal standpoint, there’s obviously a huge opportunity being looked at to meet a variety of medical needs around the world.

Wargent is enthusiastic about Palmy being a great place to live and innovate.

He and his wife, Liz, are raising two young daughters here. “My daughters were born here, so it’s everything they’ve ever known. This is an amazing place to raise a family.

“It is genuinely a great place. You’ve got the 360-clock around us of other exciting parts of New Zealand nearby that you can explore. Palmy’s a town that’s easy to navigate and it’s a happy and safe place to live in.“When my wife and I occasionally reflect on the kid of life we and the girls would have had if we stayed in the UK, and it’s not the Covid-19 thing at all, we do really feel like we’ve given the girls a really great start in life and they live in a happy place.”

Wargent has noticed a shift during his 10 years in Palmy. “I’ve noticed this gravitation towards going to a future place, in terms of innovation. I spend all my working days in The Factory, so I see it daily. But you see those little pockets of things springing up around town – there’s a lot of good stuff going on.”

As for Palmy as an innovation and food science centre? All the necessary ingredients are in place for the exciting developments that are happening, he says. "For an innovation ecosystem to function really well, you need a few things on the ingredient list, such as seats of learning and seats of research, and we have that with Massey. At the same time, we have the affiliated seats of learning and research, with the CRIs (crown research institutes), and the science campus.

“Then you’ve got groups of people who are usually working together to try and help smart, innovative ideas become reality. You have that through The Factory and the Sprout incubator programme that’s housed within The Factory. Sprout is propelling itself into a bigger place. We have investors drawn to and watching this space closely.”

Places such as The Factory and Sprout nurture ideas and make connections, including with investors. “Here food science and agtech ideas can go all the way from start-up to accessing those bigger lumps of investment when you are talking about raising millions of dollars for a start-up or a company.

“Palmy is one of the only places in New Zealand, particularly in the agtech and food science seats, that you’ve got this local ecosystem with all the steps of a future company or a future innovation idea there to support them.

“Even in the last two years, a whole heap of things has been happening around nurturing innovation. It does make Palmy truly unique,” Wargent says. “If you looked at some of the agtech companies in New Zealand that have raised some very significant money from overseas investors, two of those companies, one of them is BioLumic and the other one is ZeaKal, you’ve got this pin on the map that in New Zealand terms is punching way above its weight in terms of having the vehicles to support innovation.”