An app designed by a ‘true entrepreneur’ that provide farms with a paperless system has won the LammaFounders Trophy at this year’s show.
Will Dunn, creator of the Ag-Drive app, was presented with the award on day one of LAMMA at the NEC, Birmingham after winning the Digital category of the show’s Innovation Awards. He said: “This is our first award, and I am really pleased, particularly that it is such a prestigious one. It rewards the whole team’s success – everyone behind the scenes, our customers who have given us useful feedback along the way, as well as family and friends who have supported me.”
Exhibiting at the show has also proven a great success for the company. Mr Dunn said: “We have met lots of contractors who are our target audience. With everybody in one place for two days, it means there is a lot of opportunity to meet customers and potential customers face to face and talk to them about Ag-Drive.”
Will Mumford, who presented the Digital award, said: “We liked that he had identified a problem, fixed the problem and that it was created in the UK by a true entrepreneur.”
The Founders Trophy is presented to the overall winner of the Innovation Awards, chosen from all four categories – Arable, Livestock, Future Farming and Digital. A panel of three judges for each category awarded gold, silver and bronze awards with a panel of six voting to decide the overall winner.
Opico were the Gold winner of the Arable award for Farmdroid. The award was presented by Teresa Rush, Head of Arable for Lamma organisers, Agriconnect. She said: “The development of robotics in the last couple of years has been phenomenal, and Farmdroid has been leading the way with that.”
Opico went on to also win gold in the Future Farming category. This was awarded by John Handbury who said: “From my point of view it is a really futuristic piece of equipment that will particularly help vegetable growers.”
JF Hudson was presented with the gold award in the Livestock category for Lactalign. “This very innovative cluster holding device has proven to be a very impactful innovation in terms of mastitis control with a payback period of only 103 days,” said Andrew Knowles from Fram Farmers who presented the award.
Chris Rothery, co-organiser and chair of judges said he was delighted that the Innovation Awards returned to LAMMA after a three-year break due to Covid. “The awards are an important aspect of the show recognising and rewarding innovative and forward-thinking businesses. We are very pleased that the awards are back and look forward to making them even bigger and better next year.”
