FOMENT, a joint-partnership between Flinders University New Venture Institute, Hydra Consulting and Wine Industry Suppliers Australia, has a simple ambition – to have Australia identified as the global home of wine-tech and tour-tech.

FOMENT is an accelerator program designed to enable tech start-up enterprises in the wine and tourism sectors to advance their product or service into a market-ready phase, with the aim of presenting Australian exported to the world.

To help achieve this, the FOMENT 2020 program will be launched with FOMENT Wine and Tour Tech Variety Hour, from 4pm on Tuesday 30 June – an online event being broadcast via YouTube Live from Yalumba’s Signature Cellar in the Barossa, which will feature presentations about tech innovations from speakers including Chester Osborne of d’Arenberg winery, wine writer Max Allen, Damien Wilson of Sacramento State University, Brent Hill from SA Tourism Commission, and Polly Hammond of Spanish wine marketing company 5forests.

Having delivered its pilot Wine and Tourism Technology Acceleration program in 2019 with great success, the FOMENT program has expanded for 2020 thanks to support from Wine Australia, Barossa Australia, Australian Government Entrepreneurship Facilitator Service (Barossa Yorke and Mid North) and an South Australian Government’s Wine Industry Development Scheme Grant.

After the launch, applications will open for start-up ventures to apply for the Acceleration Program, which will be driven through SkipsoLabs innovation ecosystem platform.

Tickets for access to the online event are available online through Eventbrite. And further details are available from the website www.foment.com.au.