Toowoomba farmer Mark Peart raises the steaks with his Direct Injection Technologies startup

A TOOWOOMBA farmer, who carved out a career mustering cattle by helicopter, is now flying high as the boss of one of Australia’s fastest-growing ag-tech companies.

Direct Injection Technologies founder Mark Peart.

A TOOWOOMBA farmer, who carved out a career mustering cattle by helicopter, is now flying high as the boss of one of Australia’s fastest-growing ag-tech companies.

Mark Peart founded Direct Injection Technologies (DIT) five years ago after realising there had to be a better way to feed supplements to livestock on outback stations. Such supplements are necessary for an estimated 92.5 million cattle and sheep in Australia to grow healthily.

“These supplements used to be fed to animals in a big bag, but the problem was the big cattle would eat it all and leave nothing for the smaller ones,” said Mr Peart, who started DIT with the help of his father Mike, a former cattle station manager.

Mr Peart said DIT had developed a technology platform that allows the supplements to be added to the animal’s water supply and monitored remotely.

“My dad and I were originally tinkering in the shed when we came up with the idea,” he said. “All animals have to drink so by putting supplements in the water they get an amount proportional to their weight.”

DIT last week acquired for an undisclosed amount uSEE, a remote monitoring platform, which will allow the company to build “the most cutting edge intelligent sheep and cattle stations.”

“No one has successfully been able to build an ag-tech farmer network in Australia’s most isolated farming regions due to the remoteness,” he said. “With our technology, farmers can be on the beach and monitor what supplements are given to their animals.”

Mr Peart, who previously ran a helicopter mustering business in the Northern Territory, said the acquisition of uSEE would allow the company to expand across Australia and even look at export markets with products such as cameras, tank and water monitors and weather stations. “We have had interest in the technology from Indonesia and Japan,” he said. DIT currently employs 10 people but that could increase to 25 to 30 as it expanded.

DIT will open a supplement factory in Mt Isa in the coming months to serve close to 13 million cattle in northern Australia and in the latter part of 2019 will establish distribution centres in Perth and Melbourne.