IN AGRIBUSINESS news, Agridry ownership moves south of the border, AgriChain’s offering expands through an agreement with Sapphire Technical, and digital grain assessor GoMicro has signed an MoU with capacity-booster AICRAFT.

Agridry changes hands

Agridry has sold to Morrison Industries, the Forbes-based business which manufactures HE Silos.

Agridry was established in Toowoomba in 1976 and is a major developer and manufacturer of drying and  aeration equipment used on nuts, pulses and woodchips as well as grain.

Agridry vendor Adam Montgomery said he was delighted that a family business such as Morrison Industries would guide Agridry through its next chapter.

Mr Montgomery has owned Agridry since 2011, and has sold the business to concentrate on his other established business interests.

Morrison Industries managing director and owner Steven Morrison said Morrison Industries had wanted to expand into the grain-drying market for some time, and the acquisition of Agridry fulfils this objective.

Mr Morrison said the Toowoomba manufacturing site would remain as the key location for the dryer operation and the business will continue to be run by the present management and supported by existing staff.

Given improved weather conditions in most growing regions across Australia, Agridry products are continuing to receive significant buyer interest for the year ahead.

The sale was handled by agricultural adviser Wayne Fischer and managing director Garry Stephensen of Lloyds Business Brokers.

Sapphire Technical rolls into AgriChain

AgriChain has cemented its place as the largest commodity supply chain ecosystem in Australia by incorporating Sapphire Technical Services, the team behind the successful grain storage platform Grainstor, into their ranks.

“We are exceptionally pleased to be working with the Sapphire team; they have been in this space for 20 years and bring a lot of complementary assets and knowledge to our business as well as increasing our network significantly,” AgriChain chief executive officer Caile Ditterich said.

The deal will ensure traders, growers and industry participants who already use the AgriChain system to access stock and sales data in the cloud will now have the ability to view data, and transfer stock and cash grain from participating sites, all on the one platform.

Sapphire Technical is based in Horsham, Victoria, and its CEO Brett Moore started developing the GrainStor system not long after Moore Bulk Storage opened in 2000.

The merger will see an additional 3 million tonnes of warehoused grain across 45 sites added to the AgriChain ecosystem in addition to 16 grain-packing facilities.

“We’ve been looking for the right partner for a while now and despite a number of other opportunities put forward, AgriChain was the best fit for us and our customers,” Mr Moore said.

“We did paper tickets for the first season and it was a nightmare; we spent more time reconciling them than doing anything else.”

Their Horsham site, which includes a container-packing facility, since 2015 has been leased to Shannon Bros to supplement its Beulah facility.

Sapphire Technical Services also owns and operates a grain-packing and documentation module as well as a cotton module which will be incorporated into the AgriChain product suite.

As part of the arrangement, the AutoWeigh platform will also roll in.

“AutoWeigh is a great product; it was one of the first software platforms to make automated weighbridges a reality and it has proven to be an exceptionally robust and efficient tool for our customers.” Mr Moore said.

AICRAFT, GoMicro sign MoU

Artificial-intelligence company AICRAFT has signed a memorandum of understanding with fellow South Australian company GoMicro to utilise its computing systems in order to power GoMicro’s AI assessment solutions for agriculture.

AICRAFT has developed computing solutions for space and industrial applications which are particularly suitable for withstanding harsh, high-temperature, high-vibration conditions found in agriculture and mining.

The first application of the partnership will be for the real-time quality assessment of grain as it is transferred from trucks to silos, and is soon expected to enable users to more reliably assess the quality of entire truckloads or shiploads currently gauged through representative samples.

A prototype of GoMicro tech using AICRAFT-boosted processing capacity is scheduled to be tested by Walco Seed Cleaners at Halbury in SA’s Mid North this month.

“We are extremely excited about this partnership with GoMicro, especially that we have already ported and successfully demonstrated GoMicro’s AI model for grain quality control working on a self-powered portable device,” AICRAFT CEO Dr Tony Scoleri said.

GoMicro has already built and deployed defect-assessment apps for wheat, lentils, corn and soybeans, with customers using it in Australia, India and Indonesia.

“The fusion of AI and edge computing will derisk the entire agricultural value chain by removing the unreliability of manual sampling and the subjectivity of manual quality assessment,” GoMicro CEO and founder Dr Sivam Krish said.

Source: AgriDry, AgriChain, AICRAFT, GoMicro