Vertical farm business InvertiGro scores Food & AgriTech Award


Denham Sadler
Senior Reporter

New South Wales-based tech company InvertiGro has won the Food Agritech category at the InnovationAus 2022 Awards for Excellence for its novel and innovative solution to the world’s global food security struggles.

The InnovationAus 2022 Awards for Excellence were presented on Thursday night at a gala black-tie dinner at the Cutaway in Sydney’s Barangaroo district.

The Food and Agritech category celebrated some of Australia’s best and brightest companies focusing on value-added food production and agriculture technology, across the spectrum of food processing, production and range, high-tech sensor devices, farm-based robotics and plant-based meats.

“It’s an amazing award,” said co-founder Paul Millet. “And this this environment is great for innovators and for startups and businesses like ourselves. So we’re absolutely thrilled.”

InvertiGro co-founders Paul Millett and Ben Lee

Australia now has nearly 500 agritech startups and 15 agritech incubators and accelerators.

InvertiGro is leading the way in this field with its indoor vertical farming solutions, providing a productive and sustainable way of addressing global food security issues and the growing impact of climate change on the agriculture sector.

The company provides end-to-end growing solutions for indoor vertical farming, including its own hardware, operating software and supporting services.

Its two core offerings are the InvertiCube and InvertiWall.

InvertiGro was founded in 2017 by its CEO Ben Lee and COO Paul Millett, who designed the product to assist others to sustainably and profitably deliver herbicide and pesticide-free produce.

It allows for the farming of produce with just a fraction of the land and water required by traditional at-scale farming, and means that the hyperlocal produce is always fresh and in-season.

The company recently partnered with Woolworths to demonstrate the potential of its product in-store, with herbs growing in the fresh produce section using its technology.

The plug ‘n’ play service addresses many of the most significant issues facing the sector today and is getting noticed around the world, Mr Lee said.

“[People] are really waking up to what we’re developing outside of the current indoor farming landscape. That really makes us stand out and makes us a viable option to take it everywhere. Not only globally, but to beyond — even space!”

NSW-based company Hone Carbon was highly commended in the category for its real-time, in-field and low-cost measurement of soil carbon aimed at unlocking carbon sequestration.

The InnovationAus 2022 Awards for Excellence were supported by: Investment NSW, AusIndustry, Australian Computer Society, Technology Council of Australia, Verizon, Mimecast, Microsoft Australia, Digital Health CRC (DHCRC), Agile Digital, METS Ignited, Innovation Manufacturing CRC (IMCRC), CSIRO, and Q-CTRL.

Photography for InnovationAus.com by Phil Carrick and Belinda Pratten

Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.

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