Stacking the Odds in Favour of Growers: Caecilia Potter and the BreezeCoat™ Mission

How a daughter's determination to honour her father's life work is reshaping the way inputs reach Australian grain crops — and why the industry is paying close attention.

There is a particular kind of founder story that begins not in a co-working space or a university incubator, but at a kitchen table, listening to a parent talk about a problem they had spent a career trying to solve.

For Caecilia Potter, CEO and Commercial Founder of VensoGrow, the origin of BreezeCoat™ is inseparable from the legacy of her father, Emeritus Professor Owen Potter AM – an internationally renowned chemical engineer who spent decades pioneering innovations in fluidised bed technology. Owen developed a novel method for processing particulate materials – seeds, fertiliser granules, feed pellets – more efficiently and with far less environmental impact than anything that came before it. His catchphrase was: “Australian resources do not excuse Australian’s from resourcefulness”. The science was extraordinary. What it needed was someone with the commercial conviction to bring it to market.

That someone was Caecilia.

With a career spanning enterprise IT at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), stockbroking at J.B. Were (now Goldman Sachs Australia), and the founding of an award-winning design studio, she brought a rare combination of disciplines to the challenge: engineering literacy, financial acumen and an instinct for how complex technology gets translated into products that real industries will actually adopt.  She worked side by side with Owen to prove the concept, led the engineering and science team through the successful pilot and new patent families, and established VensoGrow to take BreezeCoat™ to the world.

"Fertilisers, animal feed and seed treatments are essential to feed a growing world, yet constitute one of agriculture's biggest environmental pressures," Caecilia says.  "BreezeCoat™ is a globally scalable way to apply coatings to fertilisers, seeds and animal feed so they do more for farmers and cause less environmental harm."

That mission – do more with less, and do it responsibly – is what brought VensoGrow into the Farmers2Founders Scale Accelerator.  What happened there sharpened the strategy, opened unexpected doors within the grains industry and revealed where the most urgent commercial opportunity truly sat. What follows is a conversation with Caecilia about the science, the pivot and what BreezeCoat™ means for the future of Australian grain production.

Q&A with Caecilia Potter, CEO and Co-Founder of VensoGrow

Caecilia, you came to VensoGrow from a background in technology, finance and design – not agricultural chemistry.  How did you come to lead this company?

The technology came first, and it came from my father.

Professor Owen Potter spent his career as a chemical engineer and his final major contribution was developing a fundamentally new way to process particulate materials using a novel gravity-fluidised VensoFlow fluid contactor.  It's more efficient, gentler and more precise than fluidised bed or rotary drum approaches.  When he showed me the many potential industry applications, I could see the applications in agriculture and understood that it was something the industry needed.

Owen passed away before VensoGrow could realise its full potential, but his vision is very much alive in every iteration of BreezeCoat™.  My job is to do justice to what he built – and to make sure it reaches the farmers who will benefit from it.

I've always loved growing healthy food for my family.  Seeing BreezeCoat™ help farmers produce more with less, while building resilience to climate pressures, is the most meaningful job I've done in my professional life.  Meeting so many committed members of the agricultural community has spawned lasting friendships and a deep respect for the vital work they do.

For those who aren't familiar with BreezeCoat™, what does it actually do – and why does it matter for grain growers?

At its core, BreezeCoat™ is a precision coating platform.  It applies multiple layers of nutritional, biological and protective treatments to seeds or fertiliser granules in a single, controlled process – dust-free, with precise drying and near-zero shearing or thermal stress.

The reason that matters for grain growers is that the way inputs are stress; Fertilisers genuinely inefficient:  Dust-off at application not only wastes the expensive coatings but creates health and safety risks and when exposed to moist air can clog  the fertiliser lines in the air-seeders;   Conventional coating equipment can't reliably deliver biological actives without damaging them through heat and mechanical stress;  Fertilisers can't be customised for regional needs without expensive co-granulation;  and Seed treatments using harsher chemistries limit seed shelf life to roughly twelve to eighteen months, creating costly waste and constraining what biological treatments can be applied alongside them.

BreezeCoat™ addresses all of these problems in a single step.  Multiple actives – biological controls, nutrients, protective agents – are stacked in discrete layers that keep incompatible chemistries separated and stable.  The patented flash drying encapsulates friable feedstocks and coatings to stop dust in its tracks. The AI-designed BreezeControl software monitors every layer, manages dose accuracy and generates a QR-coded record of exactly what is in each treated product.  Critically, coated fertiliser and seeds, even with much higher liquid loads than is currently possible, result in negligible mass increase when dry – and work with existing on-farm and manufacturing equipment, so adoption does not require new infrastructure investment.

The programme surfaced a significant pivot in your commercial pathway.  Tell us about that.

We entered the program with seed coating as our primary market focus.  The science supports it strongly and the long-term opportunity is substantial.

But through direct producer engagement - including sessions with Yenda Producers – a different set of problems kept surfacing and they were coming from every direction at once.  Fertiliser manufacturers were describing dust-off as an urgent, unsolved operational issue.  They were tired of saying ‘no’ to growers wanting more than ~5l/t of products like trace elements, stabilisers and fungicides on their fertiliser.  But the alternative was to exceed the industry liquid limit and deal with catastrophic caking, shale in the end product and production halted to clean out the blocked lines.  Suppliers were frustrated by the inability to customise commodity products for different regional soil conditions without resorting to expensive compound co-granules.  Growers were being charged for micronutrients they didn't need because the standard product couldn't be tailored.  Blends achieved by mixing small amounts of trace elements like copper or zinc into a 50t truckload resulted in uneven spread across the field.  Nobody had a practical, commercially viable way to deliver biological actives in a fertiliser format.

These weren't minor inconveniences.  They were described as persistent, high-priority challenges with direct impact on margins and sustainability, and BreezeCoat™ could address all of them.

When you hear that level of alignment across the value chain, you don't ignore it.

So how did you resolve the tension between the fertiliser opportunity and the seed coating pathway?

We realised they were not in competition – they were sequential.

Fertiliser coating has a clearer and faster regulatory pathway than seed coating, particularly for evenly applying more meaningful doses of established coatings like anti-denitrification, phosphate solubilisers, humates and trace elements as well as registered fungicides like flutriafol, along with enzymes and biological actives.  The industry commitment we encountered was immediate and concrete and the platform is the same; the BreezeCoat™ hardware and BreezeControl software serve both applications.  One large West Australian grower christened the output “fully-loaded fertiliser” and a new premium category was born. 

So the decision was to lead with fertiliser coating, build the commercial traction, the field evidence and the industry relationships, and use that foundation to pursue the seed coating opportunity in parallel.  For growers, this means the benefits arrive sooner.  Every field needs fertiliser.  For VensoGrow, it means a faster path to the kind of real-world evidence that underpins both investment and long-term adoption.

The Pilot Demonstration following evokeAG seems to have been a significant moment.  What happened?

It confirmed that the industry was ready to move.

We hosted our second Pilot Demonstration at our Melbourne facility with several of Australia's major fertiliser and crop input businesses in attendance. Each of them came with specific operational challenges in mind and identified how BreezeCoat™ addressed problems they had been carrying for some time.  The conversations moved quickly from 'this is interesting' to 'how do we work together.'

That shift matters.  It means the validation is no longer just technical.  It is commercial.

A NSW producer cooperative has already committed to establishing an advanced commercial fertiliser pilot plant integrating BreezeCoat™ - with a longer-term vision for seed coating – and is seeking state government investment support.  That plant will run the full value chain from production through to grower trials.  It is being driven by manufacturer and grower demand in equal measure.

What does BreezeCoat™ deliver for an Australian grain grower in concrete terms?

The immediate benefits are operational.  One pass.  Even application across the paddock.  Reduced handling complexity.  Safer application through a dust-free, dry-to-touch, flowable product.  The ability to customise and deliver ‘fully loaded’ fertiliser with the actives that are relevant to a specific region's soil and pest pressure, without paying for compound co-granules carrying unnecessary micronutrients.  Planned grower trials will also establish whether the dust-free format can mitigate fertiliser blockages and potentially speed up sowing. 

But the longer-term agronomic case is equally important.  When you can reliably deliver biological agents in a controlled-release format, you create the conditions for improved rhizobia nodulation in legume crops, enhanced biological nitrogen fixation and improved legacy nitrogen availability for following cereal rotations.  That translates to higher yields and reduced fertiliser costs – a double benefit that directly improves grower margins.

The opportunity to decouple many synthetic crop protection actives from the seed coat is also significant.  By shifting some systemic pesticides and fungicides to a BreezeCoat™ fertiliser granule rather than the seed treatment itself, seed shelf life extends from around eighteen months to approximately three years,  toxic incineration of unsold stock is eliminated, sensitive seeds are protected from the harsher chemistries and the seed coat is freed up to carry benign enzymes and biostimulants that improve germination, assist water uptake and enhance vigour under stress – a direct benefit to establishment rates in broadacre cropping.

Modelled across wheat, corn and canola, that shift alone represents an estimated $60.4 million reduction in seed disposal costs for the industry and a yield benefit valued at $36.9 million.

VensoGrow has attracted recognition beyond the agrifood-tech sector.  Can you tell us about the Earthshot nomination?

We were nominated by AgriFutures for the 2026 Earthshot Prize, which recognises transformative solutions to the world's greatest environmental challenges.  That recognition reflects where BreezeCoat™ sits in a broader context: it is not just an efficiency tool for agriculture, it is a genuine environmental lever.

By enabling biological actives to replace legacy or failing synthetic chemistries, reducing dust pollution, along with leaching, volatilising and binding of fertilisers, improving nutrient-use efficiency and reducing the greenhouse gas footprint of fertiliser application, BreezeCoat™ contributes directly to the sustainability outcomes the grains industry is increasingly required to demonstrate to export markets, to investors, and to the communities in which growers operate.

We have also received a LaunchVic AgTech grant to fund expert spray-drying advisors  and onboard agri-industry expert Chris Ramsey.  The applications of this technology extend well beyond any single sector or challenge.

What is the current status of the Seed round, and what will the capital enable?

We are raising a $3 million Seed round.  The capital is directed at completing the Generation 1 BreezeCoat™ machine design, establishing a manufacturing agreement, and funding the industry trials that will carry us from proof-of-concept to commercial validation at scale.

The engagement we have secured from across the value chain – producers, cooperatives, fertiliser companies and seed businesses – is the foundation on which that investment case rests.  These are not expressions of interest; they are active commitments from businesses and grower groups who have identified BreezeCoat™ as a solution to problems they are experiencing right now.

BreezeCoat™ machines are scheduled for commercial launch in 2027.  The work being done between now and then is about ensuring that when those machines arrive, the industry is ready to adopt them at scale and growers are among the first to benefit.

For growers, agronomists and supply chain businesses in the grains sector – what would you want them to understand about VensoGrow's direction?

That we are here to build something lasting, not to extract value from a single product cycle.

The problems BreezeCoat™ solves have been present in the industry for decades:  dust-off, liquid-load limits, nutrient inefficiency, one-size-fits-all, the constraints of synthetic-heavy seed treatments, the inability to deliver biologicals at commercial scale – these are structural challenges. Addressing them requires a platform offering mass customisation, that works within existing operations, is genuinely scalable and that delivers measurable outcomes growers and their advisors can verify.

BreezeCoat™ is that platform and the grains industry – more than any other sector we have engaged with – has been generous, direct and clear in telling us what it needs.  That directness has shaped everything from our product roadmap to our commercial sequencing.

We are committed to delivering on what the industry has asked for and we are grateful for the support that has made it possible to move as quickly as we have.

Where VensoGrow Stands Today

Caecilia Potter and the VensoGrow team are advancing the Generation 1 BreezeCoat™ machine design toward a 2027 commercial launch, supported by LaunchVic AgTech grant funding.  Evaluations of the technology are underway on canola and corn seed with a major commercial industry participant, and a committed NSW producer cooperative is progressing plans for an advanced fertiliser pilot plant integrating BreezeCoat™ across the full value chain.

VensoGrow has applied for research investment in conjunction with grain grower groups and commercial partners to demonstrate and validate improvements in nutrient efficiency, productivity and sustainability across the Australian grains industry.

The company has been nominated by AgriFutures for the 2026 Earthshot Prize, recognised as a top innovator by Beanstalk AgTech's Drought Venture Studio and is currently raising a $3 million Seed round supported by industry commitments across every part of the grains value chain.

Closing Reflections

Caecilia Potter's story is a distinctive one in Australian agrifood-tech: a founder who came to deep technology from the outside, driven by a personal mission, and has built a commercial pathway around rigorous producer engagement and an honest assessment of where the industry was ready to move.

The decision to lead with fertiliser coating was not a retreat from a more ambitious vision.  It was a sharper reading of what growers and the supply chain actually needed, and how to build the momentum that would eventually open every door.  For an industry navigating increasing pressure to demonstrate environmental responsibility whilst maintaining productivity and profitability, BreezeCoat™ offers something rare: a single technology that addresses efficiency, sustainability and cost in the same step.

For grain growers, agronomists and supply chain businesses working through the challenges of input management, biological adoption, nutrient efficiency and sustainable cropping, VensoGrow's platform represents a practical, validated pathway – one designed to work with existing systems and deliver better outcomes across the season.

Through its Scale Accelerator and broader agrifood-tech pathway, Farmers2Founders supports scaling companies like VensoGrow to sharpen their commercial strategy, deepen industry connections, and accelerate the adoption of solutions that make a lasting difference for Australian grain growers.

👉 Find out more about the F2F Scale Accelerator: https://www.farmers2founders.com/scale

👉 Explore the F2F TEKFARM network — connecting producers with agrifood-tech innovators: https://www.farmers2founders.com/tekfarm

This work is delivered as part of Farmers2Founders' ongoing partnership with the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), supporting innovation that strengthens the long-term productivity and sustainability of the Australian grains industry. https://grdc.com.au/