When life gives you lemons

Sandstone Pine

When life gives you lemons, dehydrate them

Bond University student Lachlan Creese is tackling the global food waste problem one dehydrated lime at a time.

In his final year studying a Bachelor of Property at Bond University, Mr Creese launched Dehydrated Co, a business which transforms fruit bound for the bin into a dried garnish with a long shelf life.

“Most weekends, I approach farmers at the local markets and purchase their fruit seconds,” explains Mr Creese.

“I turn this imperfect fruit into something that is stylish and delicious and can be celebrated in the kitchen.”

His success has been made possible by the Bond Transformer program which supports entrepreneurial students like Mr Creese to bring their businesses to life.

Having been through several iterations of the Transformer program, Mr Creese has benefitted from the advice and support of Transformer judges and supporters.

Mr Creese credits the feedback and ideas he received throughout the Transformer process for the complete refresh of his branding and pitch approach, which saw him take out the most recent Transformer Launchpad competition, receiving a $2000 boost to his business coffers.

Lachlan Creese presents his products.

Bond in top two for start-up success

Bond produces more successful start-up founders than almost any other Australian university according to new data.

The League of Scholars compiled information from Crunchbase, the top source of data on venture capital funded start-ups, to show which Australian universities had produced the most founders of successful start-ups.

Published in The Australian newspaper, the figures are based on the number of founders who reached the milestone of attracting venture capital funding. When adjusted for the size of each university, Bond was just beaten for the top spot by the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

Bond can boast 18 graduates over the past 10 years who have founded successful start-ups, which equates to 97 founders for every 100,000 graduates when adjusted for student population.

Earlier this year Bond alumnus John Christie, who founded modular home company ModnPods while still an MBA and Master of Finance student at Bond, secured Queensland Government funding to double the size of the ModnPods Arundel factory, allowing them to produce 200 modular homes a year.

The State Government support will allow ModnPods to expand its current 1400sqm factory to 6200sqm, cutting pod construction time from 12 to four weeks.

Mr Christie’s business success was borne out of Bond’s Australian-first Transformer program, a feefree, extracurricular option for all students that’s designed to foster and support start-ups.

“I turn this imperfect fruit into something that is stylish and delicious and can be celebrated in the kitchen.”

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

TEACHING AWARDS

Bond Business School’s Vishal Mehoratra has received the 2022 Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Learning and Teaching. Mr Mehoratra won the prestigious award for delivering engaging student experiences using real-world projects and business cases.

RESEARCH AWARDS

Professor Paul Glasziou won the Research Excellence prize at the annual Vice Chancellor’s Research Awards. The Early Career Research Excellence Award went to Bode Ogunmakinde from the Faculty of Society & Design and Dr Adrian Gepp (Class of 2001) from the Bond Business School received the award for Research Supervision. The PhD Award for an Outstanding Contribution to a Field of Research went to Jamie-Lee Thompson.

YOUNG TALL POPPIES

Bond researchers Associate Professor Robin Orr and Associate Professor Christian Moro (Class of 2010) took out gongs at the Queensland 2022 Young Tall Poppy Science Awards. Dr Orr won for his work in injury prevention for servicemen and women, firefighters, police officers and first responders. Dr Moro was recognised for his research into the physiology associated with bladder diseases.