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Gaining Ground Through Better Partnerships

Bringing a new product to life is never easy, especially in the world of agritech and biotech, where ideas often begin on the farm or in the lab. The journey from concept to commercial product is filled with technical unknowns, competing priorities, and decisions that can make or break a startup’s ability to scale. For founders in the Sprout Accelerator programme, having the right support can make all the difference.That’s where Sprout Founder Support Partner, Blender plays a key role. As a ...

Meet the Founder: NutrAureus

Omega-3s might be tiny molecules, but they pack a big punch. Powering everything from brain performance to heart health and helping combat obesity, they are essential for keeping human bodies in top shape. Yet, traditional fish-based supply covers only 30% of global demand, leaving most people deficient and many consumers wary of taste, allergens, and sustainability questions. Surprisingly to many, fish don’t actually make Omega-3s. It all starts with microalgae, the original producers of ome...

Meet the Founder: Rhize Analytics

A good pasture can look healthy from the top, yet the real story is happening out of sight, keeping farmers and growers quite literally in the dark. For Rhize Analytics, the mission began with the frustrating reality of not knowing what was happening below ground. Rural professionals, farmers and researchers know roots drive production, crop resilience, and environmental performance, but they have struggled to measure what’s happening below ground quickly and reliably. Meet the founders of Rh...

Meet the Founder: BioChroma Tech

The era of synthetic food colours is under pressure. With landmark decisions this year in the US from the FDA and major retailers like Walmart to phase out artificial colours, the food industry is in a race for natural solutions. The problem? Natural colours are notoriously unstable and often fade during food manufacturing and storage. That's the exact challenge BioChroma Tech is built to solve. They are re-engineering nature's colours to create vivid, high-performance colours that are cost-effe...

Meet the Founder: ZEDLAB

Food waste isn’t just what ends up in our kitchen bins, it starts long before that. In orchards and packhouses across Aotearoa, near-perfect fruit is often rejected, not because it’s damaged, but because it ripens too quickly to survive storage, transit, or time on the retail shelf. That everyday loss sparked a simple question for founders Evie Tan and Zac Taylor: What if packaging could do more than just identify fruit? What if it could help it stay fresher, naturally?That question became t...

Meet the Founder: Gifted Microbes

The way we grow food is changing. Many of the synthetic chemicals that farmers and growers relied on are being phased out or no longer work as efficiently as they used to. Our soils offer solutions - microbes that have evolved over millions of years to combat pests in the ground. However, finding the right microbe with the ability to replace synthetic chemicals has relied on chance. In his search for new antibiotics for human health, academic scientist Jeremy Owen realised he was onto something ...

Meet the Founder: Kode Veterinary Science

When you’re a vet, you learn a variety of ways to fight cancer. Then you face the reality that many pet parents can’t afford or choose not to go through with the treatments. Siobhan remembers the quiet blows that came week after week, where so many pet parents decline treatment because it’s too costly, too harsh, too far away, or simply not available. In New Zealand especially, access is thin, with only a handful of registered dog treatments and very few specialists. And yet cancer is ever...

Meet the Founder: Hyades

Our skies are full of untapped intelligence. Hyperspectral satellites capture rich, layered data about soil, vegetation, and environmental conditions.  But making sense of that complexity remains a challenge. Turning those millions of spectral readings into clear, “where should I act next?” insights isn’t easy, especially for farmers who rely on fast, practical decisions rather than technical analysis. That’s the problem the founders of Hyades set out to solve.Meet the team behind H...

Meet the Founder: Aqua-Analytica

Water quality and security are among the most urgent global challenges.. Far beyond just an environmental concern, water quality is a linchpin for public health, food production, ecological stability, and economic resilience. Water systems are highly sensitive to nearly every human activity: urban development, agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing, and more. As land use intensifies and more areas are converted to productive purposes, the environment’s ability to absorb the impacts is shri...

Meet the Founder: myCOW

Farmers are drowning in data. Data from milk meters, sensors, pasture walks, invoices, lab tests… every day brings another information stream to interpret before the next milking or paddock move. Shaun Balemi knows the industry well. Born on a dairy farm and trained as a dairy nutritionist, he’s spent his career helping farmers turn numbers into practical changes that increase animal performance. But time was the bottleneck. He could only go into so much detail, so often. The idea for his ve...

Meet the Founder: Kelp & Co.

Seaweed is a global resource with untapped potential for human and animal health, as well as environmental sustainability. Yet, for all its promise, there's a significant gap between scientific research and commercial application. Kelp & Co. is an exciting early-stage venture dedicated to bridging this gap by demonstrating the versatility and economic potential of New Zealand seaweed.The idea for Kelp & Co. came from a personal mission. Juliet Linzmeier wanted to find a career that bene...

Meet the Founder: NanoSoils Bio

Growers are losing time and money as seeds take longer to germinate and stored stock loses viability. When seed emergence stretches from days to weeks, a single dry spell or cold snap can wipe out a planting, and unsold seed often goes to waste. NanoSoils Bio was founded to change that. Led by Dr Cong Vu, the team is adapting nanoparticle delivery to carry active ingredients directly to seeds, aiming for faster and more reliable germination in the field, as well as longer storage life.Meet the f...

Meet the Founder: Picka

Kiwifruit is a cornerstone of New Zealand's horticulture industry, but it faces a growing challenge: maximising post-harvest fruit quality while maintaining a skilled workforce. With the industry expected to significantly increase its production by 2030, a new approach to harvesting is needed. Meet the founders of Picka, one of the ventures participating in the Sprout Accelerator Spring25 Cohort, who are tackling this problem head-on with an autonomous, robotic picking assistant. The three ...

Meet the Founder: Computerised Equine Bit

For a horse rider, the bit is an important point of communication with their horse. Yet, this critical tool provides almost no objective feedback, leaving riders to rely on subjective guesswork to understand their horse’s reactions, comfort, or stress.Meet Stefan Hadži-Longinović, the founder of Computerised Equine Bit, one of the ventures taking part in the Sprout Accelerator Spring25 Cohort. His venture, Computerised Equine Bit, is bridging the gap between sensor technology and animal welf...

Meet the Founder: Advanced Mineral Solutions

For Garret Huelson, the inspiration for Advanced Mineral Solutions came from a leisurely drive past Lake Waikare in 2017. The lake's bright green colour struck him, then a month later, he observed an unnatural purple, both a clear sign of an ecosystem overwhelmed by an algae bloom. After extensive research and conversations with local government authorities, Garret was inspired to find a way to help restore New Zealand's lakes and transform a toxic environmental problem into a viable and valuabl...

Meet the Founder: Wingman

Dairy farmers in New Zealand and around the world continuously endeavour to improve the quality of their herds. Sometimes, evaluation systems prioritise production efficiency at the expense of crucial traits like udders and fertility, leaving farmers with herds that don't meet their needs. Meet Wingman, one of the ventures taking part in the Sprout Accelerator Spring25 Cohort, who are providing an independent solution for dairy herd genetic improvement.Wingman's core idea came about from Mark Be...

Meet the Founder: Twenty Eightish

For Olivia Trilford, the inspiration for her venture wasn't just a market gap - it was a deeply personal journey. Olivia's personal struggle with endometriosis drove her to seek less aggressive, supplementary ways to nurture her health. As a mother of twin daughters and stepmum to three, with a "chaotic, busy life," she was looking for a convenient, supportive product that simply didn't exist. So, she decided to create it herself. Meet the founders of Twenty Eightish, a venture in the Sprou...

Meet the Founder: AiWorx

A single orchard can contain over a million tiny buds, each with the potential to become a flower and later a fruit. Every stage, from bud to bloom to fruit, requires careful, hands-on work that can be slow and often imprecise when done on a large scale. Because growers don’t have exact data or maps showing where and how many buds, flowers, or fruitlets there are, they must rely on guesswork. This means pollination may use too much expensive pollen, workers spend extra time thinning, and the f...

Meet the Founder: Neutectic Solutions

The journey to creating Neutectic Solutions began with a large, global problem: marine biofouling. Biofouling is the costly build-up of organisms on submerged surfaces, and current solutions are highly toxic to the environment and to aquatic life. The idea emerged from a funded science programme at the Bioeconomy Science Institute, aimed at solving problems for New Zealand's open ocean aquaculture. Meet the founders of Neutectic Solutions, one of 18 exciting ventures participating in the Sp...

Data and AI in the Future of Agrifood Innovation

Reflecting on the conversations from the 2025 Sprout Summit earlier this year, I am more excited than ever for the opportunities for technology within the agrifood value chain. From pasture to supermarket aisle, increased data utilisation and adoption of AI technology is set to unlock enormous value. McKinsey projects that full connectivity and digitisation in agriculture could contribute up to US $500 billion in annual GDP by 2030, while Google has estimated that agrifood companies adopting AI ...

Largest Sprout Accelerator Cohort Set to Ignite the Future of Global Agrifood Innovation

From ground-breaking applications of AI and robotics to advancements in sustainable materials, bio-based solutions, and environmental monitoring, the Sprout Accelerator Spring25 Cohort represents an exciting future for the global agrifood value chain.We are excited to welcome our largest cohort yet, with 18 innovative early-stage ventures joining us on their entrepreneurial journey to discover, articulate and refine the foundations to grow their startup. Despite more spots being available in the...

Quantum Computing: The Next Frontier in Agrifood Technology

Modern agriculture has undergone a digital transformation over the last decade, with the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) and, more recently, the explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, a technology that is poised to further reshape and dramatically progress the industry is quantum computing. At the recent Sprout Summit in Auckland, AI and emerging technologies like quantum computing took centre stage, with experts and industry leaders discussing how these tools could drive the next...

Building Agrifood Innovation from the Ground Up: Talent, Teams, and the Power of Networks

In the fast-evolving world of agrifood innovation and generally in the world of innovation and startups, talent is the most precious resource, and often the scarcest. As climate, technology, and market dynamics reshape our global food systems, the startups best equipped to lead this change are those who build not only the right products but the right people and networks around them. It is the people and entrepreneurs who attract the capital and investments, followed by the technology and market....

Bontia Bio Secures NZ$1.25m To Launch World-first Tech That Taps Into The Protective Power Of Plants

Kiwi biotechnology company Bontia Bio has announced a NZ$1.25m seed funding round led by Sprout Agritech and supported by KiwiSaver provider Booster NZ’s Innovation Fund, with a $750k repayable grant from Callaghan Innovation, to support the development of natural anti-parasitic treatments that address a growing need for safe, effective and environmentally sustainable solutions in animal health. Bontia Bio’s technology is a world-first method for producing powerful natural compounds found in...

Sprout Invests in POP to Drive a New Era of Personalised Pet Wellness

The pet wellness industry, valued at over $100 billion globally, is booming, with an increasing number of pet owners seeking ways to extend the health and lifespan of their beloved animals. As the demand for scientifically backed, personalised pet care grows, New Zealand-based Sprout Agritech has announced its latest pre-seed investment in POP, a company redefining pet wellness with innovative, science-backed solutions.Founded by Alan Tsui, Gigi Ng, and Lauren Bonds, POP’s flagship product, PO...