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James Kayam appointed International Business Development Manager at Agri-EPI

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The Agri-EPI centre has recently welcomed a new International Business Development Manager, James Kayam, to their Business Development team.

James has a diverse background in marketing, business support and development across both the private and public sector, internationally and within the UK. He has spent 8 years in New Zealand as a resident and spent 6 years working for the UK Government in the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), as a Deputy Senior Lead for Agri-Tech, receiving an DBT Expert Award in 2021. Previously, James worked for Innovate UK EDGE as an International Project Manager coordinating and delivering Government funded Global Business Innovation Programmes and Global Incubator Programmes to markets all over the world.

Throughout his career so far, James has assisted hundreds of UK companies on trade and export support and assisted in delivering millions of pounds of inward investment into the UK Agri-Tech sector, as well as supporting overseas strategies and export ambitions. He has strong international networks and has also led on mapping regional UK agri-tech capabilities.

James is highly passionate about promoting UK business, innovation, and capability to the world.

James said:

“I am excited to be joining the Agri-EPI Centre. I am incredibly passionate about showcasing UK agri-tech innovation and its potential on a global scale. I have found that nothing satisfies me more than meeting new people, developing new relationships, identifying opportunities, and contributing to the success of business.

In light of the challenges posed by climate change and the increasing global population, I firmly believe that Agri-EPI pioneering agricultural engineering can play a pivotal role in driving sustainable farming methods.”

AIA Agri-Tech Investment Advisory service expands staff

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AIA has expanded its staff with the appointment of Jos Lovegrove-Fielden to the role of Investment Advisory Manager.

Jos joins AIA from PwC’s London practice where he oversaw audit, assurance and advisory services to a range of venture capital, private equity and investment management clients. He is also a partner in his family’s dairy farm in Shropshire.

AIA, an agri-tech investment advisory service, was launched in September 2022 to bridge the gap between investors and innovative agri-food start-ups. It combines expertise in capital raising transactions with the sector expertise, asset base and network of its parent, Agri-EPI Centre.

Joining Agri-EPI Centre, Jos Lovegrove-Fielden said:

“Innovative tech is key to enabling agriculture to respond to the macro challenges and disruptions that it faces. The commercial and investment opportunities that will flow from this are enormous, as will be the impact for people and planet more widely. I’m thrilled to play a part in supporting this transition with AIA.”

John Grealish, head of advisory at AIA, said:

“Jos brings the ideal combination of financial and investor experience, alongside a real world knowledge of farming.

“Since we launched AIA late last year we’ve found the scale of the opportunity has been overwhelmingly validated. Jos’s arrival will enable us to support more companies and more investors in achieving their ambitious goals, even in a challenging market.”

Agri-tech Investment Advisory Ltd is an Appointed Representative of Sapia Partners LLP, an entity which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

For more information about AIA, please follow this link.

Agri-EPI welcomes new Academic Partnerships Manager, Wendy Hewitson

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Agri-EPI Centre has welcomed on board a new Academic Partnerships Manager to their team, Wendy Hewitson.

Wendy has a diverse background, with twenty years experience within the retail sector, followed by a further twelve years at Barclays, where she spent the last five as the AgriTech programme manager for Barclays Eagle Labs.

Wendy was one of the founders of the AgriTech Industry vertical for Barclays Eagle Labs, where she created and oversaw the delivery of many successful accelerators, events and industry focussed support material and programmes. She helped support much of the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem throughout all areas of the food supply chain.

Wendy is passionate and highly effective at enabling knowledge transfer, sharing collaboration and growth opportunities with both agritech/agrifood innovators and key industry players within the UK.

Wendy said:

‘’I’m so excited to join Agri-EPI Centre. I’m hoping to help strengthen a collegiate approach between the expertise within academia, the innovative ecosystem, and the breadth of expertise that Agri-EPI centre provides to support the transition and transformation of the agricultural supply chain towards net zero.

The agricultural sector and food supply chain is an ever-changing environment, impacted daily by climatic, political, and societal pressures. It has such a breadth of un-tapped opportunities and capabilities. Having seen how technology, innovation, and collaboration has grown over the last five years I really see this as an opportunity to continue to broaden engagement and collaboration both nationally and globally.”

Putting farmers at the centre of innovation

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Agri-EPI Centre has enlisted a network of farms spread throughout the UK to participate in the Agri-EPI Farm Network.

Why a network of commercial farmers?

The innovation farm network was developed by Agri-EPI from the desire to “close the gap” between research and the end-user, by creating a platform to host research projects and evaluate developing technology in a commercial farm environment, rather than in a simulated or research environment. Each farm has technology deployed to measure variance at every stage of production, understand inefficiencies within the system, and inform the agri-tech industry to direct their research to those areas. The goal is to ensure technology is developed to be robust and relevant to meet the challenges and requirements of the end users.

The network is diverse, comprising different farming systems, sectors, sizes and business structures producing a range of agricultural commodities, all equipped with the latest precision sensor technologies that are purpose-built to measure your agricultural innovation. We provide a set of services to assist in the creation of agri-tech products through either commercial or grant funded projects. We assist in the development process through a combination of a strong technical team and a world class set of equipment and facilities. Our innovation services include validation, full use requirement and analysis, data collection and interrogation, market insight and analysis, sustainability analysis, economic modelling with the focus of ensuring agri-tech solutions will have a positive impact on-farm.

Lorenzo Conti, Founder & Managing Director at Crover, said:

“The Agri-EPI Centre has been our first and main partner for on farm demonstration projects. Being able to access a variety of commercial farm sites for testing and demonstration from early on and getting feedback from some of the country’s most innovative farmers about what works and what doesn’t has been invaluable for us.

Like every new technology, it is ultimately only as good as the value perceived by the end users, and the Agri-EPI Centre’s leadership in Knowledge Exchange and dissemination activities has also meant that we have been able to refine and deliver the message to farmers and grain storage operators and created a regular stream of inbound requests.

We are glad to see Agri-EPI’s team and footprint grow at a similar pace to our own business so as to be able to support agricultural innovation projects at more stages and geographies.

For any public-funding-backed innovation project in the UK, partnering up with the Agri-EPI Centre is a no-brainer!”

Read more below:

Farm offer brochure

Footbathing to treat lameness in dairy farming

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Lameness is recognised as the primary animal welfare issue in dairy farming. Nationally, 25% of dairy cows are lame at any one time. Although it has multiple causes, the key factor in most herds is endemic diseases, such as digital dermatitis, sole ulcers, and white line disease. Early detection and prompt intervention is critical to effective control and treatment of lameness, which costs farmers in excess of £300 per case. Many hoof lesions, especially relating to digital dermatitis, are visible prior to lameness developing but can be difficult to see in practice and require specialist training to diagnose.

The Hoofcount footbath was developed and introduced to the UK market in 2012. Designed with simplicity in mind, it now has a sustained reputation in the UK as the Market leader in Effective and Reliable Footbathing.

The UWE academic team collaborating on the Hoofcount project is led by Dr Wenhao Zhang of the Centre for Machine Vision. Wenhao’s team are working on developing and integrating machine vision technology and AI software for hoof disease detection. Their aim is to realise algorithms, able to capture, filter, and analyse hoof images several times daily in a non-invasive way, to detect hoof issues in the earliest stages and to monitor for changes. Experiments and tests are being conducted in several UK dairy farms.

 

Read more below:

Hoofcount case study

Agri-tech solutions for sustainable farming

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At Agri-EPI Centre, we help to develop robust and commercially viable solutions to empower more sustainable farms. From bespoke validation trials to system and product development, we are a collaborator of choice for agri-tech developers, start-ups through to established companies.

We are open to new projects and partnerships that use agri-tech in both funded and private research which are focused on the health and welfare of soil, crops and animals in order to:

• increase efficiency

• enhance environmental sustainability

• ensure productivity and farm business sustainability

We provide a set of services to assist in the creation of agri-tech products through either commercial or grant funded projects. We assist in the development process through a strong technical team combining with a world class set of equipment and facilities.

Balancing productivity with environmental and business sustainability is a challenge at farm level, which will only become more scrutinised. We believe healthy soils provide a foundation for a resilient agri-food sector.

Relevant and affordable agri-tech has a part to play in supporting a sustainable farming system, whether its software to automate data capture, manage inputs and outputs for better decision making or hardware to optimise current processes, increase efficiencies, reduce emissions and provide precision application.

Agri-EPI is here to help with your tech development and offers the following resources.

Read more below:

Sustainable farming brochure

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