Panellist: Building successful ecosystems to ensure the success and resilience of the forest bioeconomy in the future.

Dr. Gaetano Dedual
CTO/Founder, Futurity

Gaetano is Co-founder and CTO at Futurity Bio-Ventures, where he leads R&D and application development work managing national and international relationships, alongside technical and financial validation of processing technology from Europe and the USA. Gaetano has supported in raising ~$2M seed capital from private equity, government, and grants, and is assisting to securing the next Series A capital of $3M for the next stage of development.
He completed a PhD in chemical and process engineering which involved the novel design, construction, and operation of a custom-built reactor to produce renewable chemicals from NZ P. Radiata.

He sees New Zealand as a potential leader in the future biorefinery industry, with all fundamentals in place for supplying large scale, high value products to market. The positive benefits impact which are expected from this project are immense and being part of something which has the potential to transform New Zealand is extremely exciting.