Fieldays coffee break leads to innovation and collaboration for Fertco and AgriSea

Agrisea chief executive Clare Bailey and Fertco chief executive Warwick Voyce inspect the results of their collaboration.

It all began on a cold, dank National Fieldays morning at Mystery Creek.

Across the aisle from each other in the Main Arena, the Fertco and AgriSea teams are preparing for the day’s action.

There is just enough time to share a hot coffee and some friendly banter before action begins.

Inevitably, the talk centres around seaweed and fertiliser.

But, things begin to get more interesting when the two companies discover they share key values and goals.

They also find out that they share some customers.

It doesn’t take long after that before the possibility of combining seaweed and fertiliser in the same product begins to take shape.

The first thing to do is to work out how this can be done.

Combined innovation

Drawing on more than 25 years of innovation in each of their respective fields was the answer.

As Fertco chief executive Warwick Voyce said, “We provided the granulation technology developed to make dicalcic phosphate, a controlled-release fertiliser.”

“And we contributed our seaweed brewing technology,” AgriSea chief executive Clare Bailey said.

“It’s specifically designed to preserve the ‘life’ in the seaweed, and retain as many of the nutrients as possible.”

So they combined these technologies to create “SeaPhos” — a granulated seaweed-phosphate fertiliser that releases its nutrients and biostimulants in a controlled way avoiding wastage of time, money and nutrients.

Collaboration

SeaPhos granules combine seaweed biostimulants and essential plant nutrients.

Combining innovative technology from two independent companies is not always a straightforward thing. It requires a lot of collaboration.

For SeaPhos to become a reality, both companies needed to think about how their product would work when combined with the others.

For example, Warwick said they had to check that adding seaweed to the dicalcic fertiliser would not interfere with the granulation process or compromise the structure of the granule.

Clare said that they needed to make sure the granulation process would maintain the integrity of the seaweed and that no nutrients would be damaged or lost.

“We also had to work out an accurate method of metering the seaweed through the entire production run to ensure consistency in every granule,” she said.

And of course, calculations were necessary to ensure the correct proportion of seaweed biostimulants, phosphates, and lime would end up on the customer’s property.

Fortunately, thanks to a lot of head-scratching and trial and error, the teams were able to overcome all of these issues in a relatively short time.

Shared values and goals

Agrisea chief executive Clare Bailey (left) and Fertco chief executive Warwick Voyce (right).

Although the real star here is SeaPhos, the story is really about the people, both Clare and Warwick said.

The fact that the collaborative process did actually go very smoothly and that this unique product exists at all is largely due to the values and goals shared by the two companies.

Apart from innovation and Kiwi ingenuity, caring for the environment and helping farmers grow more for less have always been goals for both companies.

“At Fertco, we focus on manufacturing fertiliser products that reduce harmful environmental impact while maintaining productivity,” Warwick said.

“And at AgriSea, we’re committed to developing products that build and grow healthier soils, plants, and animals with less cost to the farmer,” Clare said.

With shared values and goals like these, it’s no wonder that both companies have ideas about collaborating on other products.

Sometimes, the catalyst for great ideas need only be something simple like a shared coffee.