Irish agri tech start-up StrongBó has raised more than €750,000 in seed finance to put its automatic animal weighing equipment on the market.

Gallagher, a New Zealand-based global leader in animal management solutions, was the chief investor, alongside Enterprise Ireland’s high potential start-up programme (HPSU), and three Canadian investors including the 519 Growth Fund and the Grand River Agricultural Society (GRAS).

Michéal McInerney is the co-founder and CEO of StrongBó agritech

Michéal McInerney, co-founder and CEO of StrongBó, said its equipment “allows farmers to gain new insights into how their animals are actually progressing.

“StrongBó provides average daily gains, so farmers can see how much the animals are growing and how much weight they're putting on. You can’t manage what you don’t measure!,” he said.

StrongBó automatically collects frequent animal weights, which are then analysed to provide the farmer with a business intelligence platform and decision support tool.

This data is then used by the farmer and their advisers to make smarter decisions about their livestock on a daily basis, but also allows them to plan with greater certainty into the future.

Ideal fit

Gallagher Animal Management general manager Sarah Adams said: “We had been investigating adding remote weighing into our suite of animal management offerings for a while.

“It’s always been our preference to scan the market for potential partners first before starting the development process from scratch and the team at StrongBó were the ideal fit for this.”

She added: “Being able to regularly weigh livestock while in the paddock can mean real savings in labour output and potentially down the track it may enable them to track the more feed efficient animals and lower greenhouse gas emitters.”

Marty Metzger of Metzger Veterinary Services and StrongBó co-founder said the partnership with Gallagher has helped StrongBó gain “enormous insight” into the global agribusiness sector and what is involved in taking a technology-driven idea into the prototype phase and on into the market.

After recently receiving money from the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of the ESA BIC initiative, StrongBó is now situated in NOVA UCD.

To complete this round of funding, StrongBó collaborated with the IFAC food and agribusiness advisory committee.