West Lothian entrepreneur wins the prestigious Women in Innovation Award
A West Lothian entrepreneur has won the prestigious Women in Innovation Award.
The Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award is celebrating 50 women leading the charge in groundbreaking industries.
This year’s winners include SilviBio Ltd, a Livingston-based biotech business founded by Dr Alicja Dzieciol to help growers grow more plants, more sustainably.
SilviBio’s innovation addresses the need for better performing peat-free growing substrates, also called potting soil, for professional and hobbyist growers who grow food, trees and flowers in pots and other containers. Peat use to grow plants is well known to cause environmental damage associated with harvesting peat from peatlands. From decreasing flood risk to sequestering carbon, peatlands serve a unique and vital role in Scotland, which is home of the majority of the UK's peatlands.
In light of this, DEFRA announced plans to ban peat use for all growers by 2030. However, DEFRA themselves predict that professional growers will lose over £600 million due to poor performing peat-free alternatives and the need to reinvent production processes.
Alicja Dzieciol’s and SilviBio’s award-winning innovation, ‘LatticeGro’, is one solution to this problem. LatticeGro is a peat-free propagation block for salad greens and other crops. Currently, these crops are fully reliant on peat because it retains its shape well and easily transplants out, unlike currently available peat alternatives. Dzieciol’s team overcame these challenges by engineering locally available raw materials to unlock their latent potential.
To support their grower network, SilviBio are establishing pilot production this year to launch their flagship product line, including LatticeGro.
Alicja Dzieciol is one of the four Scottish winners in the Innovate UK’s nationwide competition. Innovate UK is the UK’s innovation agency. Its mission is to help companies to grow through their development and commercialisation of new products, processes and services. The latest round of Women in Innovation Awards drew 1,452 applications from women business leaders.
Responding to the Scotland’s strong showing, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland, Kirsty McNeill, said: "Congratulations to these four fantastic Scottish women whose passion, resilience, and innovation will help inspire a new generation of leaders. I am pleased the UK Government, through Innovate UK, is celebrating and supporting these and trailblazing entrepreneurs who are driving change and helping to build a future of innovation and economic growth across the country."
Alicja Dzieciol said: “This Award is a real gamechanger for my business and the growers we support in their peat-free transition. It will help us ensure that LatticeGro and our other products will get into the hands of growers who need it. Together we can achieve a truly sustainable future while ensuring we grow food for our plates and trees for our forests.”
Explore all 50 remarkable award winners and discover how you could benefit from the programme by searching ‘Innovate UK Women in Innovation’ or visiting: bit.ly/IUKWomenInnovate