At the 8th presentation of the District Economic Development Agency’s Higher Education Award, prizes were awarded to three different regional companies which had collaborated particularly successfully with Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences this year.
The concept put forward by the ‘Sustainable Ornamental Plant Production’ association, based in Straelen, is one of the three projects that impressed the jury. As part of the ‘Sustainable Potted Plant Production NRW’ working group, the stakeholders, in collaboration with 13 horticultural businesses and two retail firms, the North Rhine-Westphalia Chamber of Agriculture and “Das Grüne Medienhaus”, have developed a strategy for the resource-efficient and sustainable cultivation and marketing of ornamental plants. Alongside Markus Baumgärtner (Managing Director), Tobias Mund (Chair), Michael Bongers (Deputy Chair) and Matthias Vornbrock from the Wetzel horticultural business (Treasurer), Professor Dr Dagmar Mithöfer (former Professor of Agribusiness at Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences) and Dirtje Derksen (research assistant) were honoured.
The second award went to the company bb med. product GmbH. As part of her Bachelor’s thesis, Naomi Kirsten – supervised by Professor Dirk Bockmühl from the Department of Hygiene and Microbiology – investigated whether synthetic plastic thickeners used in the production of cosmetics could be replaced by natural thickeners without any loss of quality. The raw materials investigated are being taken into account in the Kalkar-based company’s current product development and are expected to be used in 2020. The partnership is therefore a good example of how collaboration with the university has practical applications.
The university’s collaboration with PROBAT-Werke, part of Gimborn Maschinenfabrik GmbH in Emmerich, was recognised as the third project. The global market leader in mechanical and plant engineering for the coffee and food industries sought to collaborate with Professor Dr.-Ing. Dirk Nissing, Dean of the Faculty of Technology and Bionics at the Chair of Control Engineering. Nissing is supervising student Tim Ambrosius on his Bachelor’s thesis, which focuses on the ‘implementation of a smart colour sensor in a roaster control system for real-time determination of the degree of roast’. Until now, coffee beans have been roasted based on temperature and time. The smart colour sensor would therefore represent a genuine innovation in the monitoring and control of coffee roasting. “The company has been given a significant boost for its future production,” says District Administrator Wolfgang Spreen with conviction.
The university prize has been awarded annually since 2012 by WfG Kreis Kleve with the support of the Volksbanken and Sparkassen in the Kleve district. By recognising three best-practice examples each year, the aim is to promote cooperation between the regional business community and Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. The university and the award-winning department will each receive 5,000 euros in prize money. The prizes were presented during the ‘Forum Kreis Kleve’ event, organised by the district’s economic development agency in the Bürgersaal in Issum, in front of around 250 interested visitors. As in the previous year, journalist and presenter Tom Hegermann hosted the evening’s programme, during which, amongst others, Professor Dirk Reiser – Professor of Sustainable Tourism Management at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences – gave a talk on the topic ‘Sustainable tourism: utopia or opportunity’.
