The South African Breweries (SAB) Foundation has named local innovation Bee-Pak, a compact bee farming system, the R1-million prize-winner of its fourth Annual Social Innovation Awards.

The Bee-Pak was a flat-pack composite beehive system with an encapsulated thermal core to insulate beehives and was designed to optimise the health, survival and production capacity of bees, which were primary food security pollinators and critical to human survival.

Bee-Pak innovator Greg Eberdeen said the objective of the beehive, which weighs 15 kg and has a life span of 50 years, was to build strong bee colonies, while contributing to job creation in rural areas.

“This prize from the SAB Foundation allows us to grow Bee-Pak substantially and we now have the opportunity to upscale our workforce immediately by more than 200 people from largely rural communities. In addition, others can use the system as a means of income generation,” he outlined.

The SAB Foundation said the Bee-Pak addressed the global focus area of food security and demonstrated the greatest potential to make a difference in the lives of people, particularly those living in rural areas – one of the key beneficiary groups of the SAB Foundation.

“The combination of social innovation and entrepreneurship is one of the best formulas to help our country address some of the socioeconomic challenges that we face and the SAB Foundation’s Social Innovation Awards is a starting point for this,” commented SAB Foundation trustee Polo Leteka Radebe.

Antifungal treatment CandidaFree Natural – which found the compound obliquumol, recovered from natural plant extracts, to be effective in the treatment of fungal infections – was placed second in the competi- tion, winning a grant of R500 000.

The third place prize of R700 000 was shared between joint winners HearScreen Smartphone Hearing Test and Driving Ambitions.

HearScreen Smartphone Hearing Test is patented software that transforms any smartphone into a calibrated device for early identification of disabling hearing loss.

Reducing costs by more than 80%, compared with existing devices, the product offered differentiating advantages, such as environmental noise monitoring for quality control; automated test sequences and interpretations that allow operation by untrained persons; and a cloud-based server for remote data monitoring and surveillance.

Fellow third-place winner Driving Ambitions was a driver training programme for people with limited mobility owing to physical disabilities, providing candidates with specially adapted vehicles.

In addition, seed grants of R150 000 each were awarded to low-cost crop sprayer Barrowmate; green energy solution AEON Free Energy Access Remote Control; Safe and Sound Technology, an external sensory device for the hearing impaired; and the EcoBrick Exchange, which provided building material made from 2 l plastic bottles filled with nonrecyclable waste.

A further development grant of R100 000 was awarded to Durban Fashion Online, a small business incubation system providing young fashion designers in the townships with the opportunity to start and run their own virtual business.

All winners would receive their grant funding in tranches determined by their growth plan to commercialise and upscale the services and products.