Agritech NZ chief executive Brendan O’Connell announced the launch of the industry’s Finistere Aotearoa Fund, a $42 million source of venture capital backed by the NZ Growth Capital Partners and San Diego-based capital company Finistere Ventures.
Finistere was co-founded by Taranaki-born entrepreneur Arama Kukutai, who has served as chief executive of Taranaki iwi farming group PKW Farms.
The investment fund was one of three key outcomes sought in the Industry Transformation Plan (ITP) launched almost a year ago.
The other outcomes were a robotics academy and the Farm 2050 initiative, focusing on tech to lower farms’ nutrient losses.
O’Connell says the fund would do much to address the disparity NZ agritech has with the likes of Israel, where for a similar amount of investment there is a 10 times greater level of export return.
He says the funds were now available, but encouraged start-up firms to consider the Sprout Accelerator programme to become proficient in understanding the steps and expectations of funders through the start-up process.
NZ has progressed well in recent years for start-up agritech, moving up the rankings for start-up potential to now be recognised as a key mover in the region, and ranking ninth globally.
Industry is being updated on the ITP’s progress through a series of roadshows around the country.
The Government lead on the ITP project David Downs says the plan also has six workstreams. One of these is exploring the ability to commercialise projects that universities and CRIs may have started on, but lie uncompleted.
“In some ways we have got a great R (research) system but not such a great D (development) system,” Downs said.
“But there are also two schools of thought. One is universities and CRIs are littered with these projects, the other is they don’t deserve to see the light of day.”
O’Connell says it could be the research required a different approach to get it to the commercial stage.
Another workstream in the ITP is improving the skills level in the sector.
A hot topic with industry delegates, one described the frustrations in a sector where 90% of staff are migrants at a time when getting overseas skills was tougher than usual. The gap between immigration and industry policy was real, and one Downs says was being discussed with government immigration officials.
The other bugbear for industry leaders is the issue of data interoperability, or the ability of different data sources to be integrated into software and systems.
“It is one of the most difficult issues for agritech, the lack of common definitions that are not stitched together in a way that makes them easily integrated is a problem,” Downs said.
He compared it to systems like online banking, where a common platform had been settled on and customer awareness of where their data was, who was using it and how.
“It is a problem that has not been solved properly anywhere in the world. There is a good opportunity here for NZ to partner up with other countries, even big data suppliers, to do it,” he said.
Rezare Systems managing director Andrew Cooke says there were niche instances around the world where interoperability had been achieved, often based on original shared technology.
“The approach we are taking is more principle and standards based, to be capable of being used across the world,” Cooke said.
Another key objective of the ITP was to set up a robotics academy, possibly within the Bay of Plenty, leveraging off work already achieved there in the horticultural area by companies like Robotics Plus.
A year in, O’Connell says this had been revised when it was realised the expertise sat in different places around NZ, and it would prove more effective leveraging off the resources already in place, rather than recreate what already existed.
In the meantime, Farm 2050 has established a network for global trial facilities and NZ-based dairy farm trials.
