New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI): Macadamia testbed for agritech at Wollongbar Primary Industries Institute (WPII)

Opportunity for

• Commercial partnerships with established or scale-up companies or agritech innovators wishing to trial or test products
• Grower groups, universities and agronomists looking to trial a technology for conducting scientific, farm scale trials
• Agricultural companies seeking technology to enable field scale testing of new products or participate in a variety of on-site initiatives in collaboration with NSW DPI.

Opportunity description

Industry challenge:

Agritech innovators require access to working orchards to install, test, trial and validate technologies and demonstrate product performance. Opened in 2022 as a showcase of best practice management and technology for macadamia production, WPII has an established working macadamia orchard. The orchard provides an opportunity for agritech innovators to demonstrate their technology in a relevant environment. The Australian macadamia industry is in a period of rapid growth enabling an ideal opportunity to introduce innovation to support our growers to continue to supply quality, sustainable nuts.

Current opportunity:

The testbed is located across two locations: the Alstonville (NSW) and Wollongbar (NSW) stations and showcases best practice management and technology for macadamia production. It produces a commercial harvest and is “research ready” for future research opportunities. NSW DPI’s macadamia testbed offers innovators the opportunity to demonstrate technology in association with the Department of Primary Industries. Inclusion in the on-site demonstration site will ensure companies have the benefit of their technologies being displayed to growers in association with DPI events and grower information days for proven technology (noting, DPI does not validate or provide testimonials for demonstrated products).

The testbed site aims are to:

• Connect producers and demonstrate best practice management;
• Increase community and stakeholder engagement; and
• Provide education and training.

The Testbed has three elements and will be activated over stages:

• Stage 1 - Alstonville site (6 blocks) - this existing plantation will be exposed to a variety of treatments to assist and demonstrate to producers how to increase productivity, production longevity and quality
• Stage 2 - Wollongbar site (3 blocks) - this will be a greenfield plantation which can inform and assist new entrants to maximise productivity and address future market and environmental demands
• Stage 3 - Workforce and education - A variety of producer education, workforce training and community activities and programs that will support regional industry development and capability will be rolled out concurrently with the activation of Stages 1 and 2.

The macadamia site will enable producers to view both commercial technology in operation and emerging technologies under development. NSW DPI invites you to partner with us and share our expertise, our unique locations throughout NSW, and our infrastructure, to solve some of the greatest challenges we face today. NSW DPI has 13,000 hectares of land under management over 25 sites in NSW, new inquiries regarding opportunities to utilise DPI’s assets are always welcomed.

'Enquire now' to speak to the team about the opportunity.