SWAN Systems finalises successful capital raise

The team at SWAN Systems is very pleased to announce the completion of its A$3million capital raise.

The funds will be used to build momentum on recent work in various export markets including the US, Mexico, Chile and Zimbabwe where SWAN is involved in a number of large irrigation projects and is developing key business relationships to fast track its growth objectives. Funding will also help consolidate its operations in Australia and New Zealand where a solid customer base reflects the strong demand for SWAN’s unique software that optimises irrigation and nutrient applications.

Investment has been sourced from strategic providers including AC Ventures out of Perth and PureTerra Ventures based in The Netherlands. PureTerra has a global mandate with a focus on supporting innovative water solutions across a broad range of sectors. AC Ventures’ mandate is across Australia with a particular focus of companies that have been through the Federal Government’s Accelerated Commercialisation program and have transitioned to “scale up” mode.

Nic Pannekeet from PureTerra said, “Given 70% of the world’s water is used in agriculture we have a clear focus on investing in companies that are creating superior efficiency and environmental outcomes. SWAN’s unique product has proven its capability to optimise and manage large scale irrigation businesses that result in strong economic and social license outcomes”.

Larry Lopez from AC Ventures added, “The team at SWAN Systems have developed a product that is addressing a key farming challenge to do more with less. The founders have extensive lived experience in the agricultural sector and this deep domain knowledge and expertise has created a product with enormous global potential”.

Tim Hyde CEO of SWAN Systems stated, “We are very excited to expand our shareholder base with such strategic partners that bring business acumen and global networks along with strong balance sheets. The transition from a Perth based start-up to a global player is much more achievable with the support from groups with experience and financial capacity”.

Perth based SWAN Systems was formed in 2016 to create cloud based software to help irrigators optimise their water & nutrient applications. The IP driving SWAN’s functionality was initially derived from many years of founder lived experience in the irrigation world including such challenging environments such as the Gascoyne and Pilbara regions. With its roots in agriculture, it soon became evident that SWAN’s market opportunity extended well beyond farming and well beyond Australia as issues of water scarcity and environmental regulation were global. The common denominator was that irrigators needed to be far more efficient and transparent in how they consumed such precious resources like water.

The key to SWAN’s unique approach is its collaboration with most of the world’s leading irrigation hardware products including weather stations, soil moisture probes, irrigation systems and satellite imagery. The strategy was to develop a scalable platform across a broad range of enterprises and to work with, rather than compete against, hardware suppliers. By doing so, SWAN leverages the increasing investment in sophisticated irrigation technology like centrally controlled systems to provide a software solution focused on both economic and environmental outcomes.

To many, the explosion of data generating devices has created an even greater challenge of how to use these often disparate information sources to inform rather than confuse the end use. Other challenges like the increasing social license demands to demonstrate greater accountability for the consumption of water and nutrients is making irrigators more open to the adoption of new technologies.

The platform aggregates and simplifies data from multiple sources where the software only product integrates with over 80 different hardware devices that are increasingly being deployed across the global agricultural landscape.

Having been awarded a grant under the Federal Government’s Accelerated Commercialisation “AC” program in 2018/19, the product was trialled across a numbers of different irrigation enterprises being agriculture, horticulture, public open space and sporting facilities. The success of these pilots enabled the SWAN team to further evolve the product to suit the specific requirements of these markets and today, many of the original trial partners are key customers.

The breadth of the customer base includes Treasury Wine Estates, Kilter Rural, Simplot, Melbourne City Council, WA Water Corp, SA Water, Sydney Water and Cottesloe Golf Course. More recently attention has expanded to include the massive markets in North, Central and South America where the potential is many multiples of Australia & New Zealand. SWAN also has market penetration in Southern Africa and is in the process of expanding relationships in this market.