On The Up: From vineyards to space – the Hawke’s Bay agritech company hoping to blast off

RossAI founder and chief executive Callum Ross with LabLess at the company's headquarters at Foodeast-Haumoko in Hastings. Inset: RossAI's BioClips for tomato growing (top) and vineyard netting.

One Hawke’s Bay business making innovations to the region’s vineyards and hothouses could soon be doing it in space.

RossAi is a deep-tech start-up focused on sustainable automation, advanced AI solutions and next-generation agritech solutions.

In layman’s terms, that means it helps farmers with new technology.

It was founded by chief executive and current Hastings District Council candidate Callum Ross in 2021, and its head office and innovation hub is at Foodeast-Haumako in Hastings.

With a background in industrial design and carbon footprint analysis, Ross started the company designing sustainable products for use in agriculture.

“We design everything from scratch, we do all the electronics, we do all the hardware and software, and our goal is to make everything here,” he said.

“Basically at the moment, 95% of the hardware we make in-house.”

One of those products is changing the way region’s vineyards and tomatoes are looked after, and is being printed at RossAI’s offices.

BioClip is a compostable agricultural clip made from biomaterials and agriculture byproducts collected in Hawke’s Bay.

Each wine harvest, New Zealand’s wine industry uses 16.8 million plastic netting clips to help protect their grapes from birds during fruiting.

The clips look similar to the ones found on bread bags but are slightly larger and made of a thicker plastic.

Ross estimated 1.2 tonnes of these plastic netting clips are currently discarded in Hawke’s Bay’s soils each year.

RossAI’s BioClip replaces this plastic waste with a soil-safe, biodegradable solution, greatly reducing the environmental impact.

Currently, RossAI can 3D-print about 2000 of the clips a day at its office but it is looking to scale-up to meet demand.

The company has also designed a BioClip for tomato growers to keep the plants on to their supporting stakes.

BioClip isn’t the only RossAI product gaining attention, they’ve also created LabLess, a next-gen testing platform that enables real-time, on-site monitoring of food production and processing, giving producers faster insights into the products they are growing.

“This is a high-tech solution that essentially reduces or eliminates the need for testing off-site and we can test anything with it,” Ross said. “So the benefit of that is it reduces costs for the operators.”

Ross said the tests currently cost businesses between $150 and $450 each time.

“So we can actually do these tests in situ, real-time, on-site and fully automated,” he said, “so a huge benefit there.”

Inside LabLess are over 10 sensors and a camera with integrated AI that can detect all sorts of attributes.

“Basically you put any object in front of the camera and the AI program will pick it up,” Ross said.

Thanks to LabLess and the AI camera, RossAI is attracting global attention and has been selected as one of nine New Zealand businesses to pitch to leading US aerospace venture capital judges as part of a venture capital pitch programme.

This is a major opportunity for technology made in Hawke’s Bay to drive change in aerospace, automation and advanced AI technologies.

“We’re excited to represent Kiwi innovation on the global stage,” Ross said.

“This is about building the partnerships that will help accelerate solutions not just for New Zealand, but for industries worldwide.”

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin and Napier.