Australian AgTech company ProAgni has secured Series A investment from established regional media entity Grant Broadcasters.
ProAgni was established in 2018 to provide antibiotic free animal feed products that preserve animal health and economic sustainability, while decreasing the environmental and social impacts of farming.
Its cutting-edge feed stock has now been used to feed one million livestock animals in Australia while removing more than one tonne of antibiotics from the food chain.
The significant investment from interests associated with Grant Broadcasters secures a minor stake in the growing Australian AgTech business. It takes ProAgni’s total capital raised to over $3 million AUD.
It comes after ProAgni was shortlisted from 45 global AgTech businesses for the prestigious Rabobank foodbytes event, which will be held on December 3.
“ProAgni started in 2018 because we wanted to remove in feed antibiotics from the food chain,” ProAgni CEO Lachlan Campbell says.
“We loaded our first batch of ProTect onto my truck and drove it to Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia (Population 40,000) to a rural supply company. Two years later, we have sold more than $4m worth of the product and removed over a tonne of antibiotics from the food system in the process.”
“In 1942, Grant Broadcasters started when Walter Grant bought a radio license in Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia, because he thought ‘this new-fangled radio thing might catch on’. 78 years later, we are one of the largest 100 per cent family owned media companies in Australia.
Grant Broadcasters is an Australian regional radio network that also includes a small number of metropolitan radio stations.
“One of the reasons we have grown the Grant Broadcasters business is that we are committed to the local communities we serve. We saw the same thing in ProAgni. They get farmers because they are farmers”
ProAgni’s patented ProTect range of feed supplements has been shown to maintain animal health and production economics in cattle and sheep without the use of any in feed antibiotics.
ProAgni is also in the late stages of development of long shelf life probiotics that radically reduce induction time to grain and have the potential to significantly reduce methane emissions from cattle and sheep while also improving feed efficiency.
“ProAgni is all about making animal agriculture more sustainable without placing a cost burden on farmers or consumers,” Campbell says.
“This commitment from Grant Broadcasters shows the belief they have in a business and products that support more sustainable production without costing farmers more money.”