Ended: 17/11/2024 11:30 PM
17/11/2024 11:30 PM
05/01/2025 11:00 PM
Ended: 17/11/2024 11:30 PM
17/11/2024 11:30 PM
05/01/2025 11:00 PM
Aimer Farming transforms pasture measurement and management. Using proprietary digital twin and computer vision technology, it generates automated grazing plans, boosts pasture utilisation, and improves milk and meat output per animal. This enhances farm efficiency, sustainability, and profitability in pastoral livestock systems and will provide farm to table traceability for the value chain.
Lack of pasture measurement - Only 1 in 50 farmers worldwide measure pasture regularly (daily or weekly), because current measurement is inefficient/takes too long e.g., hardware such as platemeters, CDax devices that can take 3-4 hours for measurement) or inaccurate and infrequent e.g., satellite-based pasture measurement)
Sub-optimal rotational grazing decisions - Due to inadequate pasture data, sub optimal rotational grazing on farm decisions are made leading to NZ$650m lost profit via pasture wastage, overfeeding of supplements, inefficient use of fertiliser etc in NZ alone, and $8-$10bn USD globally in pastoral dairy and beef industries.
Ruminant methane production - Furthermore, this inefficiency is exacerbating ruminant methane losses with ruminant cattle responsible for circa 14.5% of GHG emissions
We provide the digital solution to a) rapidly and accurately measure pasture to save time and make regular measurement possible, and to b) transform pasture data into actionable insights that reduce pasture wastage/increase pasture intakes of high quality feed, improve milk and beef production per animal, and reduce methane per unit of product for key pastoral markets of New Zealand, Australia, UK/Ireland, Latin America and the USA.
Our product comprises two key offerings:
[ ] AIMER Vision ‘digital eyes’: AI-powered, low-cost, automated pasture measurement using smartphones and drones.
[ ] AIMER ‘digital pastoral brain’: An AI-enabled operating system that acts as a digital assistant, guiding farmers with context-aware actions to improve productivity, profitability, and sustainability.
Together, these technologies allow farmers to quickly measure pasture mass, analyse pasture availability, forecast growth, and automatically generate rotational grazing and supplement plans. This increases milk solids (MS) per cow by 10%, reduces total GHG emissions by 4% reduction and decreases emissions intensity (kg CO2e/kg MS) by 7%. Furthermore, our expanding data and technology also has significant potential across adjacent industries, including feed supplements, fertilizers, seeds, on-farm consulting, and virtual fencing. These industries are seeking pasture data and insights to improve farm management, optimize supplement usage, and recommend the right pasture species, fertilizers, and management practices to enhance animal productivity, efficiency, and health. For example, our technology offers the missing link for virtual fencing solutions, enabling intelligent, automated pasture measurement, and auto-generated grazing plans that virtual fencing systems can execute.
We have patent applications underway around 1) the use of smartphone and drone for pasture measurement i.e. AIMER Vision, 2) auto-generation of grazing and supplement plans, and 3) unique optimisation score and recommendation engine.
For pasture measurement, AIMER Vision ‘digital eyes’ uses readily accessible and cost-effective smartphones and drones to rapidly and conveniently measure pasture. By contrast, other measurement hardware are expensive ranging from ~$1000 for a plate meter, 6k for a CDax pasture meter or 10k per annum for motes such as used by Farmote. The AIMER ‘digital brain’ is unique in that it builds accurate digital twins of paddocks; models and plans mob movements and supplementary feed requirements sub-daily, and provides actionable insights to maximise farm profit.
Our primary target markets are pasture-based dairy and beef farms in NZ and other key markets such as AU, UK/IRE, US and LATAM. The company's customers are 1) farm owners and managers who are time-poor and facing increasing challenges with compliance, labour, and rising input costs, 2) ruminant livestock (dairy and beef) supply chain service providers e.g. feed supplements, fertilizers, seeds, 3) corporate food companies who need digital on farm solutions to achieve Scope 3 emissions reduction targets of 30-50% by 2030 and net zero by 2050 while farmer profit is maintained or increased.
Farmers (SaaS, B2C) subscribing to AIMER and AIMER Vision seeking to optimize their operations to increase profitability, productivity and sustainability who will pay an annual subscription with an estimated worldwide total addressable market of 1.91B USD.
The pastoral livestock supply chain (B2B Data and Insights) e.g. fertiliser, feed, seed, wearables) who can harness AIMER pasture growth/ forecast covers data and proprietary models to prove/ improve the efficacy of their products and enhance their commercial activities via data feeds/ API access/ sales referral revenues. B2B: 12% of revenue.
Global food companies (B2B Sustainability Insights) e.g. Nestle, Mars who are collectively spending $9.5bn on ESG initiatives to reduce emissions, for farm to product traceability and to quantify emissions. We estimate that the B2B Data and Insights and B2B Sustainability Insights opportunities have a combined TAM of $133M USD.
We stand out in the digital pasture-management landscape with our use of cost-effective hardware, a user-friendly interface, actionable insights, and powerful digital-twin technology. Our edge is in the deep tech models/decisioning engines, built by Jeremy and Nitin and which will evolve into the definitive pastoral operating system - providing outputs to enhance the entire ecosystem. Imagine the accuracy of qualitative lab or machine-based pasture measurement but achieved via a 5 second 360-degree twirl of a smartphone or drone flight. This eventually feeding into a voice activated ‘AI agent’ where a farmer can ask AIMER anything pastoral farming related, and it will interpret the question, access relevant farm specific data, run proprietary models and then recommend the best course of action all within seconds.
AIMER Vision will be competing with other emerging pasture measurement technologies such as satellite, but AIMER itself is unique in the level of actionable insights it provides i.e. auto-generation of grazing and supplement plans, recommendation engine, optimisation. Key competitors are shown below.
Key team members include:
Dr Jeremy Bryant, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, 20+ yrs developing AI and farm system modelling tools such as Farmax, Dairy Forage Value Index and the national dairy genetic evaluation system.
Phil Townend, Chief Commercial Officer, 25+ yrs SaaS experience in AdTech scaling businesses operating in APAC, AU, US & NZ with focus on computer vision applications
Nitin Bhatia, AI Engineer, 15+ yrs developing models (at Massey) for carbon footprint, pasture quality, and GHG emission for Ravensdown, Fonterra, MPI
Duncan Willcock, Software Developer, 10+ yrs software development in Datacom including building Apps such as MyBallance
Alan Hearfield, Software Analyst, 20+ yrs experience in AgTech including BA, SME and Tester for LIC Protrak and MINDA
Isabella Campbell, Customer Success Lead, 6+ yrs experience in customer facing, support and special projects including at LIC MINDA
Yes – we have an 18-month hiring roadmap based on successful completion of the current Pre-Series A funding round which takes us from 11 to 29 staff, incl. overseas hires to support our UK/ Ire and US expansion. Imminent key hires are Product Manager (candidate identified and in play), Operations Lead, and additional Full Stack and Mobile Developers. Our hiring plan is 60% R&D/ data science and 40% commercial/ marketing/ customer facing.
Yes – Verne Atmore: Chair, Warren Bebb: Sprout, Jeremy Bryant: CTO and Founder
Paul Muckleston, Pacific Channel: Board observer
*Note: Current is YTD rather than total for the year. We currently have ARR of $300k with projections to achieve 450k by 31 March 2025.
This deal is arranged through Mainland Angel Investors (MAI) and this page is maintained by MAI. The offer has been made available to you as MAI believes you are a wholesale investor and member of MAI. Neither MAI nor Catalist makes any representation as to any lack of errors or omissions in the investment information provided. If you believe there is any inaccuracy in these records please contact Camille at Camille@mainlandangels.nz in the first instance