Friday, March 29, 2024

Making a beeline for prizes

Avatar photo
Four years after the concept came to him and on his first time at the National Fieldays Darren Bainbridge won four innovation awards for his electronic MyApiary products.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

With co-founder Carl Vink, Bainbridge creamed the awards among 80 entrants with their cloud-based operations management tool for beekeeping.

The custom-built tool was delivered on licence for the required number of users, effectively making MyApiary the IT provider for the beekeeper.

All of the biggest bee companies had shown interest in the service, Bainbridge said.

The qualified engineer with experience of product development and start-ups became aware of the need for beekeeping back-office products and joined with Vink to develop, build and market them.

They also kept bees near Hamilton.

MyApiary retained all work schedules, site details, hive treatments, locations and landowner details and produced customised reports.

Health and safety records, hazards and mitigation steps were also tracked.

Data was generated and entered on location or in the office.

Reports included consumables, staff time and resources used and MyApiary would be continually updated with registration requirements and disease declarations.

Bainbridge and Vink also sold an imported hive tracker, enabling asset location on GPS and cell phones, with four years of battery life.

Location reporting could be varied from every 10 minutes to 48 hours, guarding against unauthorised removal.

MyApiary headed the awards list with the Grassroots Prototype Award, the Vodafone ICT Award, the Tompkins Wake IP and Commercialisation Award and the Callaghan Innovation Partnership and Collaboration Award.

The Fieldays Established Prototype Award was won by Taege Engineering, Canterbury, with its power discs that resulted in better tilling before drilling or planting, saving time and effort when the ground was unsuitable for traditional discing.

The Fieldays Innovation Launch Award was won by Hydratorq of Hastings with its BioFume Ozone system for cleaning, bacterial management and bleaching.

Hydratorq also won a Locus Research Innovation Award.

The judges said it would have applications across dairy, viticulture and horticulture.

An Innovation Launch highly commended award went to StockX for its internet selling platform.

The Origin Innovation Award went to Spectrum Innovations with the M6 13 Auto Sawmill.

National Fieldays Society president Peter Carr said the awards were recognised internationally as a launch pad for leading New Zealand innovations.

All entrants had access to industry experts and advice.

"Innovation is the key to future growth of the agriculture sector," he said.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading