Supporting the development of Agritech New Zealand

Organisation: Agritech New Zealand
Grant Number: M19004
Grant Amount: $43,500
Grant Type: Market Insight Grants

Agritech New Zealand was established in May 2018 with a view to connecting everyone and everything in New Zealand’s agritech ecosystem. Their mission was to create a collaborative framework in which industry, government, research and investment organisations could work together to build and scale the sector, both at home and offshore.

As an organisation that relies primarily on memberships for its funding, they approached AGMARDT in late 2018 with a request for support (and some co-funding) to assist the development of Agritech New Zealand. This involved co-funding a series of roadshow workshops in New Zealand so they could meet and engage with representatives from the wider agritech ecosystem; the co-funding of offshore missions to Silicon Valley (Forbes Live 2019), Australia (evokeAG 2019) & Ireland (Irish Plough 2019).

The outcome of AGMARDT’s engagement and co-funding has seen Agritech New Zealand’s membership grow to almost 100 entities from across all stakeholder groups, the launch of the NZ Agritech Story with NZTE, the emergence of a connected (venture) capital fund in New Zealand, global partnerships with Farm2050 & Western Growers and more collaboration with Australia’s agritech sector. Over the past six months, the New Zealand all of government agritech taskforce has been working with Agritech New Zealand to develop a series of new initiatives and actions to support the growth and scaling of the sector.

“Without doubt, AGMARDT’s very real support at the early stage of our development has helped accelerate that process and delivered meaningful outcomes. Ongoing discussions with a range of domestic and international partners are designed to support and further scale the emerging opportunities for New Zealand’s agritech sector.” Peter Wren-Hilton, Executive Director, Agritech New Zealand