St Paul's Collegiate student inventors hot on De-Fence

Winning young innovators, from left: Robert Morbey, James Mitchell, George Dyer and William Eyre.

A team of St Paul's Collegiate School Agribusiness students have been awarded the 'Young Inventor of the Year' prize at Fieldays 2017, winning $1000 cash prize.

Year 13 students George Dyer, Robert Morbey, James Mitchell and William Eyre developed 'De-Fence', a simple but effective tool for removing old gate-latch staples from posts. It saves farmer's valuable time, money and physical stress with the ease of removing the staple.

The group of young innovators developed the product in one of their Agribusiness classes at St Paul's and exhibited it at the Innovation Centre at Fieldays last week alongside two other groups of schoolmates with their innovations.

It was an idea originally had by James' Dad's cousin, so the boys decided to develop a product to meet the need.

The prototype was made from two pieces and welded together.

After verifying the tool worked, the boys decided to get some assistance with the final design.

They were especially keen to make it a one piece unit for strength, aesthetics and to simplify manufacture.

A local sheetmetal company came to the party and the prize-winning innovation is now a simple, but effective tool.

Robert said it was exciting to take the innovation to Fieldays and test it on real customers.

He says it was hard work promoting the product constantly for four days, but the response from the public, and the award, made it worthwhile.

¦The Agribusiness programme was created by St Paul's, DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb New Zealand and 11 other Agricultural business partners to inspire secondary school students to consider a career in the primary sector.