Cawthron’s first commercial spin-out named finalist for 2025 KiwiNet Award
07 August 2025
Cawthron Institute is proud to announce that Ocean Intelligence, its first-ever commercial spin-out, has been named a finalist in the 2025 KiwiNet Awards Breakthrough Project category.
A product of over two decades of aquaculture and ocean technology research and expertise, Ocean Intelligence brings real-time ocean data together into one platform to provide marine farmers with tools and information to make informed decisions about their aquaculture operations.
Founded in collaboration with technology partner Oceanum, Ocean Intelligence helps marine farmers reduce risk, improve productivity, and protect the health of their ocean environments by indicating threats like harmful algal blooms, spat survival rates, and storm events. The platform is driven by Oceanum’s Datamesh technology, which provides a gateway to more than 5,000 environmental datasets, from satellite feeds to wave models and on-farm sensor data.
Image: A Cawthron buoy on a mussel farm.
Dr Chris Cornelisen, Cawthron’s head of Strategic Relationships and Blue Technology Lead, said this spin-out signals a major shift in how Cawthron takes its research to the world.
“Ocean Intelligence is more than just a powerful tool that brings together incredible data insights. It’s a proof point for what can happen when science and innovation, and commercial nous come together with purpose.
“There is a rapidly growing need for data-driven technologies across maritime sectors to enable blue economy development. Up until now, marine farmers are essentially farming in the dark with limited information available to them about their crop or on farm conditions unless they physically visit the site. Our technology now brings that information to their desktop, enabling farmers to manage their aquaculture farms remotely.”
Image: An example of the Ocean Intelligence dashboard, showing ocean conditions in the Marlborough Sounds.
Transforming IP into impact required an innovative path to market. Instead of licensing the science, Cawthron took the leap and built its own modular SaaS platform to serve as a global gateway for aquaculture innovation and data-driven technologies. Early-stage investment from the Ocean Impact Organisation (Australia) helped to accelerate the platform’s development and prepare it for scale.
Ocean Intelligence not only provides a commercial path for Cawthron’s research, but also for aquaculture IP generated across New Zealand’s wider science system, creating a New Zealand Inc aquaculture solution for the world.
Mussel and oyster operations across New Zealand are currently trialling the Ocean Intelligence platform with positive results. The team is also preparing to expand into major international markets like Australia and Chile.
As Cawthron’s first commercial venture in over 100 years, Dr Cornelisen said Ocean Intelligence is a powerful validation of Cawthron’s growing capability in blue technology.
“From smart sensors to autonomous marine systems, Cawthron is designing and delivering next-generation ocean technologies that help marine industries and resource managers monitor, manage, and protect our marine environments more accurately, efficiently, and sustainably.
“We work closely with industry to find solutions that enable data-driven aquaculture, proactive biosecurity, and resilient restoration. We are confident this data will help marine farmers decide how to adapt to environmental change, build resilience into their operations, and thrive in a more complex and uncertain future.”
The recognition from KiwiNet is an exciting milestone, but Ocean Intelligence General Manager Joel Bowater says it’s just the beginning.
“With Ocean Intelligence, Cawthron is not only supporting a more sustainable aquaculture industry – we’re also charting a new course for science-led innovation from right here in Nelson, New Zealand.”
The annual KiwiNet Awards celebrate the people and projects transforming scientific discoveries into new technologies, businesses and real-world solutions. The Breakthrough Project category is for publicly funded research projects that are achieving significant commercial success through spin-out, licensing, or capital investment, and Ocean Intelligence has been recognised as a standout example of science translated into impact.
For more information about Ocean Intelligence, visit: https://oceanintelligence.io/
For more information about the 2025 KiwiNet Awards, visit: https://kiwinet.org.nz/Awards