Company principal and agricultural engineer John Baker said Appleton Marine in Wisconsin was the planned manufacturer and marketer.
It would be the first venture into agricultural machinery for the big heavy-duty manufacturer and fabricator of marine and mining equipment.
Baker said the agreement had not yet been signed but a US no-tillage website had publicised the deal, including a mistaken claim that intellectual property had been sold.
Following a restructuring and down-sizing last year, Cross Slot IP would continue to manufacture the inverted T-shaped drill openers and supply them to licenced seed drill manufacturers.
It would also get the openers made elsewhere under licence.
Further licence agreements would be announced this year in different territories but the IP would always be retained in New Zealand, Baker said.
An agreement signed in January 2017 with Carrfields Machinery of Ashburton, covering NZ and Australia, was recently dissolved by mutual arrangement.
Since Baker wrested ownership of his technology from former employer Massey University in the late 1990s some $50 million of sales of Cross Slot machines had been made in 20 countries.
He had repeatedly written and spoken about the contribution that no-tillage seed sowing would continue to make to food production and security.
Cross Slots were used by a majority of arable farmers in NZ because of higher seed germination and establishment rates and to guard against the greater financial risks of failure.
The technology’s share of pasture and forage sowing was lower, Baker said.
The number one export market was the US and Canada, and the potential for sales in Brazil and Argentina was very good.
