The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on Friday launched the R90-million Biomanufacturing Industry Development Centre (BIDC) facility at the CSIR’s main campus in Pretoria.

The R90-million investment had resulted in new infrastructure, pilot-scale equipment, enterprise support programmes and skills development.

BIDC manager Dr Dusty Gardiner noted that the facility was aimed at addressing South Africa’s twin socioeconomic challenges of unemployment and low economic growth by assisting small, medium-sized and microenterprise (SMMEs) in the development of bioproducts.

The BIDC, which was founded in 2014, had already assisted 19 enterprises develop their research and development (R&D) projects into commercial product offerings.

He added that government initiatives, such as the Industrial Policy Action Plan and the Bio-Economy Strategy, were important for the development of South Africa’s bio-industry.

However, Gardiner suggested that the most significant challenge for bio-industry start-ups was moving from R&D to product development, which the BIDC aimed to address through the provision of resources and skills development.

Further, the BIDC aimed to stimulate biomanufacturing in the country and to aid sustainable job creation, strengthen the skills and infrastructure needed for bioprocesses and product development, as well as provide affordable access to the necessary facilities to support SMMEs.

To date, the BIDC had trained 54 interns and created 18 direct jobs, as well as 105 indirect jobs.

Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor, who cut the ribbon on the facility, noted that SMMEs and the science and technology sector would play a vital role in alleviating South Africa’s high unemployment levels.

She pointed out that South Africa had exceptional scientific centres and that it had an unusually high number of public-sector science centres, such as the CSIR. She also noted that 19% of all R&D in the country was done by the public sector, twice as much as public-sector science institutions in the UK.

The BIDC facility was broken into seven stations – an agroprocessing lead; a bioprocessing and technology development station; a bioprocessing fermentation lab; a bioprocessing pilot facility; a bioprocessing product development facility; an agroprocessing pilot facility; and an agroprocessing extraction facility.