APEC delegates visit Cebu mango waste recycling plant

Delegates of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation-Intellectual Property Rights Experts’ Group (APEC-IPEG) visited a bio-refinery plant for wastes from Cebu’s flourishing dried mango industry. The plant is a showcase of an academic institution that has successfully generated added income and new jobs from its intellectual property (IP) asset.

The visit is one of the activities lined up for the over 40 IP experts and policy makers attending the two-day APEC-IPEG meeting in Cebu City this week.

The bio-refinery plant for dried mango wastes is owned and operated by the University of San Carlos (USC). USC is one of the partner universities of Intellectual Property Office-Philippines (IPOPHL) in its Innovation and Technology Support Office (ITSO) program. ITSO aims to provide universities and research institutions access to available IPs and empowering their IP utilization and commercialization capacities through trainings.

Aided by the ITSO program, USC was able to develop a bio-refinery plant for wastes from Cebu’s dried mango industry. The plant converts the dried mango wastes into useful products such as mango flour, butter and tea, and ingredients such as pectin and polyphenol for the cosmetic industry. With a production that grows each year, the plant now employs more than 50 full-time staff.

“The USC plant is one of our ITSO success stories which illustrate the very best of government and private sector partnership in the area of IP. We plan to replicate this model at scale to benefit more universities and research institutions across the country. We are hoping that this visit will result in stronger policy support for IP commercialization for academic institutions,” said Allan B. Gepty, deputy director general/OIC DG of IPOPHL and head of the Philippine IPEG delegation.