The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR’s) Biomanufacturing Industry Development Centre (BIDC), a biomanufacturing innovation hub aimed at supporting small, medium-sized and microenterprises (SMMEs) to enter the local bio-industry, will have provided about R50-million worth of technical support to the 19 SMMEs currently involved in the first phase of the programme, which comes to a close in September this year. The technical support, which is funded by the Department of Science and Technology's (DST’s) Industrial Innovation Partnership programme and National Treasury’s Jobs Fund programme, is used for product and technology development, quality assurance and quality control, safety and efficacy testing, small-scale manufacturing for market testing, raw material procurement and testing, support for branding, website development and packaging, among other things.
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