Opportunity for

• Potential future trial partners including nurseries, greenhouses and angel investors and collaborators. 
  ^This opportunity is only for professional and sophisticated investors.

Opportunity description

Industry challenge

Growers are under pressure to maintain food production while meeting sustainability goals, all while juggling a challenging supply chain. At the end of every season wool growers then need to dispose of wool waste. We have developed a sheep's wool growing media that has customisable draining and wetting properties that can fill that gap and provide a local alternative to rockwool, all while supporting local wool farmers.

Additionally we can collect the waste and turn this into fertiliser further reducing costs for growers. The total-addressable-market is $US4 Billion with peat being banned or restricted creating a gap in the market over the next decade.

Current opportunity

Fleecegrow is a research startup with a prototype sheeps wool growing medium/substrate for commercial application. We have a prototype in research trials with two growers (tomato, strawberry) and one university. Our patent is filed/pending. We need to commercialise and scale. We have had strong interest from growers we have spoken to with several awaiting their turn to trial (NZ, UK, USA).

To find out more about this opportunity you can send us an enquiry via the "Enquire now" button.

Opportunity background

We have created three different types of prototype and currently have two in real world trials. Lincoln University is partnering with us to identify the perfect fertigation techniques for wool. To create the structure we needed, we had to create our own process and a small machine. While there are many mats and pots around, no-one has previously been able to create the structure needed for commercial nursery and greenhouse production.

This can be priced similarly to rockwool while reducing waste costs and meeting sustainability goals. Additionally we have a long term goal for this to be a zero carbon product sourcing from carbon neutral wool farmers.

Potential other applications

While there are possibly other opportunities in furniture and packaging, our focus right now is on growing media. The main other application is as a slow release fertiliser (for the end of life product) which can also absorb and hold water that is available for plants. There is also potential as silt mitigation (silt from flooding is too fine and compact, and adding wool fertiliser pellets may potentially add the air and structure needed.)