Hub members’ clever tech tackles sustainability, waste and biodiversity
The startup world is not an easy one, so it’s with much pride and admiration that we celebrate the continuing success of our Agrifood Hub members.
While each is at a different stage in their business journey, all have achieved significant growth in 2024, in customers, market reach, projects and recognition.
Together, they are delivering innovative solutions to support a more sustainable agrifood sector, with spillover benefits for other sectors including mining and local government.
Wildlife Drones and Nature Helm
A Hub member since the beginning of AFII (then CEAT) Wildlife Drones has gone from strength to strength, recently expanding to include a second business – Nature Helm.
Nature Helm provides a platform that enables businesses to access comprehensive biodiversity insights to support them to develop sustainable practices and reporting. By using the platform, businesses can screen for biodiversity risks and take action to mitigate them – a key point of difference with many existing products.
Between Nature Helm and Wildlife Drones, the businesses now have 120 customers in eight countries, a huge achievement in a relatively short period of time.
In recognition of their achievements to date, Wildlife Drones was recently a winner in the Telstra Best of Business Awards in the category of promoting sustainability, and a finalist in two other categories.
With an estimated one sixth of milk produced globally wasted, there’s real demand for technology to support a more efficient and sustainable dairy supply chain.
With numerous customers here and in New Zealand, and a focus on expanding their customer base into Europe, PPB Technology is undoubtedly the cream of the crop when it comes to food testing innovation.
In collaboration with UHT milk producers, the business has recently produced a new test to detect intermediate amounts of protease in products. This helps producers to ensure that milk on the supermarket shelves consistently has a 9 to 12-month shelf life, resulting in less wastage – an environmental and economic win.
Ahead of another trip to Europe to showcase their Cybertongue Technology to potential customers, PPB Technology was named a 2024 Promising Exporter in the ACT Chief Minister’s Export Awards, the Territory’s most prestigious business awards.
MTE has its roots in the ANU Research School of Biology, but, in the past 12 months particularly, they’ve branched out into industry-focused projects with a national reach.
Currently, the team is working on a project funded by Rio Tinto to extract value from mining impacted wastewater, by harvesting metals of interest.
Separately, they’re also working with the aquaculture industry and municipal authorities, including ICON Water in the ACT, to solve the challenge of removing ammonia from wastewater.
In both cases, the separation technology they are developing takes inspiration from plants to find ways to harvest critical nutrients, metals and minerals from wastewater.
While the founding members of MTE are plant scientists studying membrane separation to improve crops, with the support of the industry funding they’ve been able to hire four new team members. These team members bring expertise in protein functional screening, protein purification and embedding in liposomes.
When governments and NGOs need to make environmental and economic decisions, there’s no shortage of satellite information and climate data for them to refer to. In fact, the abundance of data, across different platforms and in different formats, creates a challenge in itself.
Hub member Haizea Analytics solves this problem with their platform, Terrakio, which brings together numerous data sources and provides them in a format that is easily accessible to the end consumer.
Since joining the Agrifood Hub in 2023, Haizea Analytics has grown to a team of seven, including two ANU interns.
They are currently working on a range of projects for high-profile clients, including the Victorian Environment Department, NSW Government and WWF.
If you have an agrifood-focused business which would benefit from access to the research expertise and infrastructure at ANU, get in touch with us to find out more about becoming an Agrifood Hub member.