Opportunities for city ‘immeasurable’

OTAGO Polytechnic senior product design lecturer Andrew Wallace says if Dunedin establishes a citywide business ‘‘cluster’’ it could make products on a scale unimaginable for single companies.

At an industry talk at the polytechnic yesterday, he pitched taking large lithium ion batteries and putting them in electric public transport minibuses to create a billiondollar industry in Dunedin.

Mr Wallace said the Danish city of Odense showed it could be done — with a population of 180,000, the city supports more than 100 robotics companies, and as a company, could take on a project no matter its size.

‘‘The concept I’ve got is Dunedin as a city forms a new company — and every little screen printer, every glazier, every mechanic, every electrician, can own a larger component of something bigger than any of them could ever attain,’’ he says.

‘‘If we work together and agree to share our intellectual property, what we can do is pretty much immeasurable.’’