Mike Mandeno is currently with the Cawthron Institute, and starts at Seafood Innovations in late June.
The Chair of Seafood Innovations, Dave Sharp, says Mike Mandeno comes to the organisation “with a wealth of relevant seafood industry experience and is well versed in the many and varied aspects of the scientific and technological challenges facing the New Zealand seafood industry.”
Mike Mandeno is currently acting General Manager of the Aquaculture and Biotechnologies Division at the Cawthron Institute in Nelson. He was formerly Research Manager at Aquaculture New Zealand, where he developed New Zealand’s first aquaculture sector research strategy. Mike has previous industry experience with seafood companies Sanford Limited and New Zealand King Salmon, and has a Masters degree in Marine Science from Otago University.
“Mike will play the lead role in achieving our goal of investing $28m of industry and government money in new seafood industry research projects over the next seven years,” Dave Sharp says.
Seafood Innovations aims to underpin growth of the seafood export industry by increasing returns across the seafood value chain, from the ecosystem in which our seafood is grown through to its utilisation for food, health and industrial applications.
Mike Mandeno says he is looking forward to the role and sees “tremendous opportunity to add value to one of New Zealand’s growing export sectors.”
