Commercial Successes

Scion aims to create maximum benefit from the knowledge we gain.

Part of our business involves commercialising science, which means introducing new products or services into the market place.

We take a pro-active role in converting concepts into market-ready opportunities, working closely with our commercial partners.

Commercialisation of technology is a high risk activity with the potential to create substantial rewards.  

Scion uses a disciplined process known as Stagegate ¬TM to assess value and opportunity throughout the commercialisation process.  

This well established process requires regular review and assessment at critical points in the development process.  

These review points, or “Gates”, involve external reviewers to improve the rigour of the process and maximise expert input into both the process and the opportunity evaluation.

Throughout the Stagegate process, projects that are not progressing well, or where the technical or business risk is not reducing, are stopped, maximising focus on those that have the best chance of success.

Examples of our commercial successes

A-Grader - A timely innovation for New Zealand’s wood processing industry

Every month in New Zealand over 100,000 cubic metres of timber is assessed by Scion’s timber assessment tool, the A-Grader. This development has played a vital role in enabling the wood processing industry to meet higher standards of product quality assurance to consumers.

With the value of timber between two grades (e.g., MSG8 and MSG10) being about 10 to 15%, there is a great incentive for the wood processor to ensure their material is correctly graded. Knowing the stiffness of any one piece can also allow the wood processor to intelligently reconstitute it to produce a more valuable product.

The A-Grader, developed some three years ago by Scion in conjunction with Taranaki-based Falcon Engineering, is a ‘stress‑grading’ machine that uses sound waves to measure timber stiffness. Since the first prototype was built in 2005, the A-grader has been installed by a number of sawmills and remanufacturing companies. There are already some 14 operating in a variety of wood processing companies throughout New Zealand, which by any standards is a rapid uptake for a new product.

The A-Grader exploits the relationship between acoustic velocity, density and stiffness. By measuring the density of a given piece of timber, and the velocity of an acoustic wave, the stiffness can be simply deduced. This is extremely fast (microseconds), requires a relatively small machine and can work on very small pieces of timber (down to about 250mm in length). It is also independent of the moisture content of the timber, or its width and depth.

The result is a simple machine, with a small footprint that easily fits into most wood processing operations. It is also highly versatile, allowing individual companies to modify it to their particular needs.

Falcon Engineering is another beneficiary of this development. This small and innovative engineering company has leveraged off this development to substantially grow its business. With an eye on the North American market, this may be only the beginning.

Functional bioplastics


The current level of global bioplastics production capacity is around 350,000 tonnes. This has been forecast to grow to around 1 million tonnes by 2010. Bioplastics already account for 60% of the biodegradable materials market in Europe, particularly within the packaging materials sector. Japan has also been a pioneer in bioplastics, incorporating them into electronics and automobiles.

Scion has developed new bioplastic materials using a combination of commercial bioplastics and variously treated waste derived, or bio-based, polymers, fillers and additives. Novel waste treatment and compounding technologies have been combined to allow the development of environmentally intelligent bioplastic materials which can be processed into a range of functional bioplastics products.

These products can be tailored to provide distinctive performance features such as higher impact strength, improved heat resistance, enhanced durability and controllable degradation profiles.

In a first of its kind, Scion, Clariant and Mulford Engineering have produced the Biopeg® by formulating a combination of materials. It is tough enough to be hit with a hammer, initially weather resistant to allow it to perform its function, but will break down benignly over time. The two-part design also incorporates differential degradation profiles for the washer and peg.

This type of niche product development is part of the large movement towards bioplastic manufacturing occurring worldwide, whereby innovation solutions are needed for specialised applications.

Timber drying

Drying is the first and most critical step in producing a high value material from timber and is the highest single cost processing step. Successful drying of timber is the platform upon which the $2.5 billion value added wood processing industry in New Zealand has been built.

In the 1970s very little wood was kiln dried in New Zealand; most was sold in the green (wet) state. These days most wood in New Zealand is sold as a kiln-dried product. The ability to make this dramatic change and the confidence that the New Zealand wood processing industry had in doing this was predominantly due to research by Scion’s wood drying group and their invention of DryspecTM.

Scion developed the software-based control system for kilns in the mid 1980s, essentially codifying their years of knowledge in drying Radiata pine into an easy to use kiln software system.  At that time converting such knowledge into a computer-based control system was visionary.

Early adopters such as the New Zealand Forest Products mill at Putaruru and Tasman Forestry’s mill at Kawerau took the risk and it was not long before the New Zealand industry followed their lead.  

By the mid 1990s DryspecTM was the national benchmark drying system – today it is the international benchmark for drying control and is synonymous with quality drying.
It has led to optimal uses of resources for drying such as labour and energy, and has also enabled the individual companies to better manage their drying processes and quality management systems.

DryspecTM played an important role in supporting the growth of an innovative engineering company, Windsor Engineering Ltd, as it developed into a substantial international manufacturer of drying kilns. The company has made sales of over 530 kilns and related equipment, generating revenues of about $20 million per year.  

Forestry software solutions

When yesterday’s forester went to perform a stocktake in his forest he was likely to be armed with a compass and tape measure. Today’s forester is more likely to be armed with a mobile computer equipped with GPS, in fact he can complete half the job in his office by running tree recognition software over satellite imagery.

New Zealand is recognised internationally as a leader in plantation forestry and Scion has provided the underpinning science that helped develop that reputation. It has played a pivotal role in effecting the changing nature of forestry, taking it from a hunch-based decision making approach to a scientific process. Business decisions such as what genotypes to plant, the optimal time to prune or harvest, and the likely value of the harvest are based on reliable data and proven models that take into account the natural variation that occurs in forest growth.

In 2002 Scion gathered all its software developers into a single business unit, branded as ATLAS Technology. Their aim was to develop a new generation of software tools, within an integrated architecture so that products relating to different stages in the forestry value chain were able to communicate with one another.

The new suite of ATLAS products has been widely adopted throughout New Zealand and Australia, generating nearly $8 million in commercial sales over the past five years. It has provided better efficiency for clients, because as the products communicate together better, so too do the people using them.

A classical example is that forest growers and harvesting groups are now sharing a common system, and those divisions that historically worked independently are now much more aware of the activities of the other group. This increases the value of the data they collect, and reduces the incidence of errors because both groups have better information. In the Alphametrik review, industry estimated that the value of improved efficiencies is worth approximately $7 million p/a.