Sprout Agritech Accelerator

Organisation: BCC Ltd
Grant Number: A18008
Grant Amount: $100,000
Grant Type: Agribusiness Innovation Grant

Sprout backs bold agritech businesses and entrepreneurs who MOVE FAST, THINK BIG and are committed to building solutions for problems that reach from farm to fork. Their goal is to find the technologies and start-ups that can have a transformational impact on the primary industries. Their focus is on helping them solve the biggest challenges to company growth, distribution and high margin monetization.

Annually, Sprout scouts the globe for both New Zealand and International agritech businesses, to select between 8 – 12 companies to participate in the five-month accelerator.

Throughout the accelerator, the companies have access to Sprout’s partner network, which offers opportunities for global distribution and marketing partnerships in over 130 countries, as well as access to world-class advice and mentoring from successful entrepreneurs and business leaders.

AGMARDT is one of these business leaders, and a member of the Selection Committee, helping to select the cohort, as well as connect entrepreneurs with relevant industry contacts.

“AGMARDT is the most important seed funder of innovation and capability development in New Zealand. They are critical in helping deliver the part of the accelerator which is consistently ranked the most important by entrepreneurs – the one on one advisory work, which helps the companies get their innovations into the market.” James Bell-Booth, Accelerator Manager, Sprout Agritech Accelerator

We are grateful for the assistance the AGMARDT Grant provided. It has allowed Freshco to direct sales and manage our own destinies in each market enabling us to extract more value from the supply chain to the consumer.

John Mangan / Director, Freshco

AGMARDT supports and enables. Projects and people benefit from funding; New Zealand benefits from development of ideas, technologies, approaches and leadership. In particular, the trust facilitates information dissemination: AGMARDT is the catalyst for ripples that spread through the primary sector.

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth /

AGMARDT's support of Texus in the above process tangibly accelerated the development of the above essential activities and testing of market entry strategy, while also exposing Texus management to cutting-edge thought leadership around market shaping and the levers that can be applied to scope and facilitate such shaping.

Nick Davenport / CEO, Texus Fibre Industry Leader Scholarship Winner

The support from AGMARDT has enabled us to gain greater insights into farmer behaviour across all sectors and which will assist accelerated uptake of the livestock exchange and enhance market opportunities for all farmers.

Jason Roebuck / Managing Director, Stock-X Limited