Tough brief for new AgResearch boss

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

"Change manager" Dr Andy West will have a brief to "rationalise" AgResearch when he takes over as chief executive on May 3.

Dr West, who announced yesterday that he was quitting as head of the Tertiary Education Commission to shift to AgResearch in Hamilton, led the officials' committee that broke up the Government's research agency into 10 crown research institutes in 1992.

He takes the helm at the biggest of those institutes after a tough year when its funding from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology dropped by $3.7 million, pushing it into a financial loss of $2.2 million.

AgResearch chairman Rick Christie said Dr West's brief would be "to rationalise the breadth of a lot of what we are doing and focus that into some core areas and clusters".

But he added: "We are not employing Andy to restructure AgResearch. AgResearch has already restructured itself a lot."

The former chief executive, Dr Keith Steele, partially backtracked last year from a controversial decision to close one of AgResearch's five campuses, employing 140 of its 1300 staff, at Wallaceville near Upper Hutt.

Waikato University biology professor Dick Wilkins, who runs a website commentary on genes and dairying, said Dr West would have to consider further rationalising the remaining campuses at Ruakura (Hamilton), Palmerston North, Lincoln (Canterbury) and Invermay (Dunedin).

"When you are a farming organisation you can have sheep, cattle, animal health and so on around the country, but if you aim to be a biotechnology organisation I think you have to rationalise on the one campus," Professor Wilkins said. "I would see that as a major challenge. The other one is to get some revenue from your biotechnology. At the moment the revenue is coming more from the farming-type applications."

Mr Christie said he hoped that Dr West would strengthen the institute's relationship with the pastoral farming sector.

He said the institute spent seven or eight months looking for a chief executive and had hundreds of applicants, including some internally. The current chief operating officer, Dr Warren Parker, was widely seen as a prime contender, but the board wanted an outsider.

Dr West, who turns 48 next month, finishes at the Tertiary Education Commission on April 16.

He earned $250,000 a year at the commission and Dr Steele's salary at AgResearch last year was between $330,000 and $340,000.