Entrepreneur Ben Neal is one step closer to a helping farmers feed their calves more efficiently.
Neal will be demonstrating the Calf SMART automated, cloud-based calf rearing system at Central Districts Field Days on 12-14 March and will be accepting orders for June-July delivery. Raising product awareness is the goal for the outing; a formal launch of the product will be at Mystery Creek Fieldays in mid-June.
Things are going well and Neal says he is happy with the progress to date. As of mid-March, two units will be in place on farms. Information gathered from the in-situ units will be used for fine-tuning prior to Mystery Creek. Already he’s ahead of the plan: there is more functionality in the machines than planned for at this stage of development.
Calf SMART is specifically designed for New Zealand conditions and is, says Neal, a superior system to the international systems that are currently available. Not only is it able to feed a very large numbers of calves, but it can also provide up-to-date, accurate management information through cloud-based web integration.
Neal completed both the Accelerator and the Angel Investment Preparation programmes at BCC and has investment through Smart Solutions, MIG Angels and the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund.
