In August, the company s first key patent was allowed in the US.
Engender Technologies, the agricultural technology company spun out of the University of Auckland, is moving to scale up its sex-selection product for the dairy industry to full commercialisation in the next 18 months and is targeting the US$2 billion ($2.8b) dairy artificial insemination industry.
Co-founded by the University of Auckland
and seed investment company Pacific Channel in 2011, Engender has secured option-to-license agreements for its technology with three of the world's largest artificial insemination companies, has successfully concluded laboratory trials and is preparing for scaling commercialisation, the Auckland-based company said.
In August, the company's first key patent was allowed in the US and its patent attorneys have confidence that it will be granted in its other key markets, it said.
Engender is hoping to capitalise on demand for technology which can control whether calves are born male or female, enabling dairy farmers to focus their production on higher-value milking cows.
In the US, it will compete with the dominant market player Inguran, which claims it can deliver heifer calves in about 90 per cent of pregnancies, according to a Bloomberg report.
