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Grape and wine producers in the line-up for inaugural entrepreneur development program

RD&E News | September 2019
13 Sep 2019
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Four budding entrepreneurs in the Australian grape and wine community have been selected to be among the first to take part in the Farmers2Founders Ideas Program.

Scott & Rachael Messenger
Clint Ledgard

Scott & Rachael Messenger | Penola, South Australia

Husband and wife team Scott and Rachael Messenger plan to develop a new zero drift recycle vineyard sprayer. Their device would allow the safe use of chemicals in delicate environments such as high-density urban areas or sensitive neighbouring crops. The market currently offers semi-recycling sprayers, but these still produce a percentage of spray drift.

Clint & Trevor Ledgard | McLaren Vale, South Australia

Father and son team Clint and Trevor Ledgard are contractors and growers within the wine sector. Both have an intimate knowledge of the problems that the sector deals with on a daily basis and are in the throes of building a device with machine vision abilities to allow pruning equipment to recognise posts and cordons. They believe this would be a welcome solution providing speed, accuracy and addressing a serious pain-point currently felt by contractors.

Scott, Rachael, Clint and Trevor will take part in the eight-week program, which will be run regionally. The Ideas Program will help answer two questions: first, is their idea worth pursuing; and second, what does it take to get started.

They will receive support, such as tools, coaching, and mentorship to test the potential of their idea and progress their concept from the vineyard to the public domain both nationally and ultimately on the global stage.

Scott, Rachael, Clint and Trevor’s concepts are among 12 selected from a pool of applicants across the Australian agricultural sector by the co-founders of the new development program, Sarah Nolet (AgThentic) and Dr. Christine Pitt (Food Futures Company) with input from sector partners.

Dr. Pitt said one of the aims of Farmers2Founders is to support more producers into the startup market.

‘It’s a program with some big outcomes for those involved. We’d love to see more producers high up in the ag and foodtech space, bringing new, exciting and highly-valuable products to market.’

– Dr Christine Pitt

‘We're absolutely thrilled to support such a strong and diverse cohort of teams for F2F’s first Ideas Program’, Dr. Pitt said.

For more information about Farmers2Founders, visit www.farmers2founders.com.

Farmers2Founders is proudly supported by AgriFutures Australia, Australian Wool Innovation, Grains Research and Development Corporation, Meat & Livestock Australia and Wine Australia.


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This content is restricted to wine exporters and levy-payers. Some reports are available for purchase to non-levy payers/exporters.