New technology to test water quality. “Cutting edge” technology that tests water quality is to be manufactured in Nelson, on the back of a $2.5 million government cash injection at artificial intelligence company, Snap IT (SnapCore).
The Nelson-based AI business has partnered with the Kiwi start-up behind the technology, RiverWatch; the first external company to use SnapCore’s manufacturing capacity which was boosted by the government loan in May.
SnapCore CEO Chris Rodley expected the move, which bucked the trend of companies outsourcing manufacturing to Asia, to create highly-skilled jobs locally – and to be of “big economic benefit” to New Zealand.
The technology designed by RiverWatch was “at the absolute forefront of the water quality monitoring space”, with “huge opportunity” to “take the tech global”, Rodley said.
The technology designed by RiverWatch was “at the absolute forefront of the water quality monitoring space”, with “huge opportunity” to “take the tech global”, Rodley said.
Chief growth officer at RiverWatch, Abi Croutear-Foy, returned to New Zealand last week from the world’s largest aquaculture technology exhibition, called AquaNor, in Norway.
Organisations from 26 countries had contacted the Queenstown-headquartered company about ordering the product over the last year, before RiverWatch marketed it overseas, she said.
“We were just getting so much international interest in what we were doing, we realised that our in-house manufacturing capacity wasn’t going to meet the cut, so having the ability to work with SnapCore … has allowed us the confidence to do things like go to Norway, to really help push that international demand … because we now have the confidence that we can meet it.”
The hardware, that “looks like a floating rugby ball”, collected data that was uploaded through satellite technology, and delivered straight to people’s computers or phones, she said.
“You can sit at your computer, and you can see what’s happening at multiple points in waterways in real time.”
As well as being faster and cheaper than the manual system of sampling, testing, analysing and recording the data from waterways, the technology was more effective in helping manage and improve water quality, Croutear-Foy said.
Taking more regular readings gave a better picture of the health of the water which was constantly changing, she said.
“If you’re taking 12 data points [manually] over the course a year, it’d be like looking at my Instagram feed and trying to figure out who I am as a person, whereas you can visit me for a week and figure it out a lot quicker.”