LyteGro

Innovate UK's Growth Incubator Program Singapore - What a journey! Its now been just over a week since I got back from my final trip to Singapore as part of Innovate UK's Growth Incubator Program. It's been six months of hard work which involved two visits over to that spectacular city, lots of mentoring sessions, meeting potential investors, customers, production partners and researchers, and quite a few pitching opportunities. I got the chance to introduce LyteGro to a South East Asian audience and they loved it! The interest generated through the GIP scheme has opened up opportunities in not just Singapore but Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and beyond with connections made to companies both large and small who are now trialling our products and who could become some of our first customers. We may have found a distributor for our products in ASEAN too! It wasn't all work though, as aside from the Grow and Innovate UK team my fellow cohort members also proved to be great fun and provided laughter, support and inspiration too. Many thanks to Safia Qureshi, Oliver Jobling, Kaushal Shah, Stephen Wong and Suneet Shivaprasad for your time, karaoke singing and general tolerance. Catch up again soon hopefully. Final thanks go to Ian Holmes, Arafah Mudzakker, Joshua Soo and Yaniv Corem who organised the whole program, fed us and herded us from event to event. Your ceaseless nagging will be sorely missed :)

evokeAG podcast If you are interested in hearing my thoughts on why Australia is a key destination for LyteGro's international expansion (or you are just struggling to get to sleep) then you may want to listen to a podcast I was invited to give with my friend Adam Shay of Residual Barrier Technologies. Thanks to the evokeAg team for giving me the opportunity to evangelise about all things banana related. #innovateuk #evokeAG #agventuresdownunder #growag #lytegro

Thanks to Yaniv, Joshua, Arafah and Ian for organising and executing the fantastic Global Incubator Program in Singapore. Over the past 6 months LyteGro and 4 other UK agtech companies have benefited from their support, enthusiasm and wisdom in helping to explore the South East Asian marketplace. It's been fun, educational and ultimately successful for all of us. Give yourselves a huge pat on the back.

A nice mention by the team that organised the fantastic evokeAG conference I was privileged to attend. Thanks to all the organisers and especially the Agventures Downunder program that sponsored my trip and gave me the chance at exhibit at the conference.

Hello from Brisbane - Part 2 I am actually writing this from Dubai airport so I am half-way back home at this point and am looking forward to seeing my beautiful wife this evening. I will have been away for 18 days all told - and what an 18 days. My trip down-under as you will have read in my previous post was a whirlwind of meetings and opportunities before and during evokeAG. This continued for the 6 extra days of my stay where Sandra Patton had organised meetings with some key figures in the fruit & veg industry, a pair of delightful potential HNW investors and a very interesting entrepreneur who focusses on circular bioenergy solutions in the mining industry. I also got to visit Prof Derek Richard @ QUT where I got truly envious of the kit he has in his labs and managed to get him excited about the potential of using our BacLyte product in his research. Thanks also to Sally Wilson @QUT for her enthusiasm and in helping coordinate the various paperwork which meant that I could leave some samples with Derek. Sally also coordinated a call with Ian O'Hara and his team at QUT's new biorefinery up in MacKay - as we want to start a project to produce our materials there to get in the hands of Aussie trialists. It wasn't all work though as I was able to meet Sandra Patton for a lovely lunch and downed a pint or two and a great Thai meal with Mark Livings over the past couple of days. My final thank you is to the city of Brisbane itself which has just blown me away over my stay here with its modern friendly vibe and breathtaking views. Check out some of my piccies and I suspect you'll agree its a cool place. Cheers Andy

More photos from AgriFutures evokeAG from the event's official photographer. 1. Startup Alley 2. LyteGro CEO Andy Lee 3. Exhibitor stands 4. Plenary session #agriculture #agtech #distilling #yeastproduction #biogas #biofuel #vaccines #bacterialgrowth

AgriFutures evokeAG You may have seen my post on the amazing time I am having down here in Brisbane. Well I thought that you deserve a closer look at the work that Greg Alder from Connections2Asia has done on our behalf. Greg put together this video which had a rolling playback on our stand at evokeAG. Whilst I was hoping that it generated interest I never anticipated how much it caught people's attention as I was pretty much inundated with enquiries from delegates over the whole of the 2 days of the event and which have lead to opportunities that I hadn't ever thought about. Great job Greg!!

Hello from Brisbane - part 1 I now have time to breathe and am catching up with myself after what has been a hectic, fun and amazingly productive last 9 days down here in Brisbane. If you have read my previous posts you will realise that LyteGro were fortunate to be selected as one of 10 companies selected (out of 134!!) to take part in the inaugural Agventures Downunder program run in collaboration with the annual AgriFutures evokeAG conference - the Southern hemisphere's premier AgTech event. This program connects startups looking to set up an operation here to the innovation ecosystem, investors and potential customers to accelerate and ease their onboarding to this fantastic country through workshops, expert panels, one-to-ones, meet-and-greets and the ability to exhibit at evokeAG. To say that this program has been amazing is so much of an understatement and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the AD team from Mandalay Venture Partners and Tribe Global Ventures with a particular shout out to Philippe Ceulen, Timothy Hui, Angela Young and Saskia Urlass, from Mandalay and Maren Birkby and Aaron Birkby from Tribe. Their organisation skills have been second to none - herding us (entrepreneurial) cats from event to event with the enthusiastic smile on their faces never wavering. Thanks also to Dallas Pearce who pretty much ran the evokeAG event as well as the amazing Mark Livings whose talent and knowledge of how to scale your business combined with his approachability has benefitted all our group. I have found so many new friends down here - from the others in the group as well as this team of truly dedicated experts. Finally and leaving the most important thank you to last - thanks to Sandra Patton and Greg Alder from Connections2Asia for everything you have done to produce LyteGro's marketing materials, videos and new Australian website (www.lytegroaustralia.com) as well as the amazing connections you have made for me. More meetings to come thanks to their work so the remaining 6 days here will hopefully be just as great. A good part of any future success down here in Australia will be because of these individuals efforts, enthusiasm for what LyteGro are trying to do and of course their friendship. Andy

Excited to be front and centre in Startup Alley at AgriFutures evokeAG. If you're in the building, come say hello and learn how we'll turn Australia's waste bananas into a microbial turbocharger for distillers, yeast & probiotic producers, enzyme & vaccine producers, and biofuel producers. #yeastproduction #brewing #distilling #biofuels #vaccines #pharmaceuticals

We're about to turn Australia's waste bananas into a yeast turbocharger called BacLyte. BacLyte doubles the yield of production cultures. In turn, this halves the amount of culture media needed, enabling huge cost savings. To learn more about how we turn waste bananas into liquid gold, see us in Startup Alley at AgriFutures evokeAG Feb 18 & 19 in Brisbane, #yeastproduction #yeastculture #probiotics #healthsupplements #microorganisms #health #bacteria