INTERVIEW
After the sale they went out for dinner and Ted told him how he had developed the basic concept for what is now MagGrow.
From his research he was aware that existing pesticide spray technologies for crops were a compromise between coverage and drift control, and that up to 70pc of what is sprayed during conventional pesticide spraying is wasted.
He felt that magnets could be the answer by inducting a chemical charge to the spray before it reaches the crop. My brother told me about it and I was intrigued to the extent that my brother and I, along with David Moore, decided to invest in the system. DC: How does it actually work? GW: Magnetic inserts in the sprayer manifolds ionise the chemical spray, thereby giving it a charge that attracts it to the crop and leads to much better application rates with more complete leaf coverage and reduced drift/waste.
One of the biggest challenges in spraying is controlling pesticide spray drift from moving outside its intended target area. Droplets drift into adjacent fields of the farm, into neighbouring farmland or water sources, causing potential cross-contamination.
It is estimated that every year Europe’s water, worth €30bn, is contaminated by pesticide runoff. We offer a 90pc better droplet attachment to the target. DC: Where are you headquartered and what are staff numbers? GW: We are based in Clonskeagh in Dublin. In 2013 we started out with two staff but now we employ 45 in total.
About half of those are based in Dublin, but most of the rest would be technical staff on the ground. These are based all over the world — Canada, Africa,
THE KNAPSACK PRODUCT IS PROVING HUGELY POPULAR WITH SMALL FARMERS IN ETHIOPIA. WE SEE IT AS A GAME-CHANGER
Europe. We are continuing to expand and hire new graduates in ag science, engineering, pharma, agronomy and, of course, sales. Getting some ag graduates in has helped a lot because as founders none of us had any real farming background of note. DC: What are your expected sales for 2017? GW: We are projecting €3-4m this year and €10m-15m for 2018. That is based on some expanding uses of the technology in areas like drones and irrigation, and also on some new contracts that are already in the pipeline. DC: What product lines do you sell? GW: We have three main product lines: the first one is where farmers can retrofit their current sprayer boom with our technology at the cost of about €1,000 per metre boom width.
So, for example, €24,000 for a typical 24m boom. Customers typically have a nine-month payback. A second product is our Greenhouse product that is doing well within the flower industry in Africa; we now have customers using 50pc less water and 50pc less pesticide with our backpack product.
Our third offering, and probably the one with most poten-