Introducing our Hatch cohort!
The Hatch Pre-Accelerator is a 6-week program designed to help agrifood entrepreneurs to hatch and validate their ideas with real customers to determine problem-solution fit. The program provides entrepreneurs with 1:1 business coaching, access to industry mentors and experts and funding to help build their agrifood startup.
We're really looking forward to working with the amazing entrepreneurs in our latest cohort. This current round involves three cohorts going through the journey together, including the National Hatch Program supported by the GRDC and MLA, TNQ Innovation Hatch supported by TNQ Drought Hub and TEKLAB VIC HatchTEK, supported by LaunchVic and Agriculture VIC.
Read on for an introduction to each of the businesses and an overview of the work they're doing.
National Hatch Program
Odette Suitor
Odette is developing an on-farm storage solution for farmers and producers which will increase the efficiency of storing produce and offers protection from disease and pests.
Jodi James
Jodi is developing a micro on-farm mobile grain processing facility, resulting in value adding organic grain grown on farms in Australia, starting with WA.
Angus Williams
Angus is sourcing cattle from farmers to produce a nose to tail, pasture raised beef brand with the goal of becoming a zero waste business. Products may include dried and cured meats, broth, stock powder, pet food, blood and bone fertilizer as well as restaurant quality beef with an emphasis on using native herbs and spices in value added products alongside high traceability and transparency with consumers.
Michael Blake
Michael is setting up an export platform for Australian genetics and assisting producers with the uptake and use of electronic Identification (eID). The platform will offer guidance and professional advice to enable local producers to implement eID and related traceability, genetic breeding value and genomic tools in their businesses, overseas market development for Australian sheep, goat and cattle genetics and the creation of export opportunities and management of logistics.
Richard Gibson
Richard is developing a platform for livestock and wool producers to upload and display all sales data. This data can then be viewed and analysed over time. e.g to look at the trending changes in wool quality over the last 10 years. It will be developed as a B2B Product between producers and the markets they sell their products to so that product quality can increase according to market demands.
Jason Siddell
Jason runs an Angus Seedstock business and aims to add value to their product and seedstock clients through the creation of a branded beef product range to be sold through their own retail outlet or online business.
Penelope Smith
Penelope and her team are looking to process the mandarin to provide a healthy snack food intended to help consumers snack the whole fruit, maximizing nutritional value, and minimizing food waste.
TNQ Innovation Hatch
Rodrigo Diaz Maldonado
Rodrigo is creating an automatic feeder for rural and non intensive aquaponic systems, to produce food of the highest quality, with a high nutritional value that is environmentally sustainable.
Pattie Jeffers
Pattie has created BoarBuster, a business providing feral pig traps and trapping services. It is an 88% effective, portable trap safe for cassowaries & other non-target species. Their largest capture so far in FNQ included 21 pigs in one drop.
Christine Huynh
Christine is developing a demonstration model of a drone for a prawn farm, which is semi-automated and reduces the amount of time required by the producer to fly. Christine’s vision is to create an ag-drone specific to aquaculture (pond farming).
Steve Boniwell
Steve is developing a water cycle restoration company focused on infiltrating and pumping water runoff to regenerate and rehydrate Australian landscapes. He has created a low-tech innovation primarily powered by water to achieve this.
Steve Booton
Steve is developing Custom Enzymes biotechnological nature-based formulations, which can assist farmers and producers to overcome the daily challenges from soil contamination through to pest and disease control, encompassing a regenerative pathway that replaces traditional controls.
John Lockhart
John is creating a gelatinized grain through a process of cooking and milling fruit and vegetables with sorghum, which makes the grain significantly more digestible. His current customers are stockfeed users, with the process potentially also useful for growers of fruit and vegetables.
Joy McClymont
Joy is the founder of Off The Track Training, a virtual health and fitness business delivering exercise programs,along with nutrition and mindset coaching to people living in rural and remote Australia. She is developing a community, program, resources and support to help people improve their physical and mental health and wellbeing through nutrition, exercise and connection.
Delvin Combar
Delvin is in the process of developing a technology using banana peel extracts to make toothpaste. This technology can provide additional accessibility, alternatives for consumers and reduce waste.
Rebecca Burnham
Rebecca is developing a global standardised outlet for tropically adapted, profitable & optimised beef genetics boasting quality in phenotype and genotype and targeted at Australian beef producers.
TEKLAB VIC
Maroye Marinkovic
Maroye, Carolyn Suggate and their broader team are developing ORCA (Organic & Regenerative Investment Cooperative), a Farmers Own grain brand, enabling direct farm to end consumer of bulk organic grains. They're passionate about delivering value back to producers and enabling technology to increase trust and provenance.
Edward Barraclough
Edward is developing a simple drone platform that the farmer can use to perform their daily stock/property checks quickly and efficiently, reduce risk for the worker and wear and tear on vehicles, and incur less disturbance to the livestock. The platform will simultaneously provide an accurate stock count, stock location and identification of potential stock issues.
Franziska Boon
Franziska is developing Feast & Faucet Farm, a reimagined community agriculture model revolutionizing local food systems. With passive solar greenhouse technology and closed-loop aquaponics, they seek to provide fresh produce year-round with an off-grid system that harnesses free energy and is water-wise.
Shalabh Gupta
Shalabh has developed a cloud-hosted application (SaaS) that can assist agribusinesses to automate the process of recording and streamlining scores of their trial or pilot programs, such as seed trials. The application offers customisable trial templates, with the option to iterate & modify any existing template for newer trials.
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Stay tuned for updates on what this fantastic cohort accomplishes over the course of the Hatch program!