Cambridge firm AgDrive’s strong response to Covid has seen it take out two prestigious awards.
It won Excellence in Emerging/New Business, and Innovation and Adaptation at the Waipā Networks Business Awards, held at Mystery Creek.
It was well-earned recognition for the firm’s remarkable story less than a year after it started.
The driver training business, part of the Ag Technology Group based at Hautapu, was born out of a stray comment over a coffee at a time when the company was staring down the Covid barrel, says director Andre Syben.
Ag Technology’s engineers, who normally spend half the year in Germany testing and developing Claas machinery, were effectively grounded by the pandemic and the company was casting around for alternatives.
“The AgDrive idea wasn’t actually mine,” Syben says. “It was an off the side comment made by a friend of mine. He made the comment completely out of the blue. He said, ‘What’s going to happen to all these contractors when they can’t get overseas staff?’
“He just went on to talk about something else, and I went, ‘aha’. So I didn’t actually come up with the idea.”
AgDrive was established to meet the gap – connecting people put out of work by the pandemic with contractors needing staff for the upcoming harvest season.
They signed a contract with the Ministry for Social Development and began short training courses at Matangi at the end of July.
Eight months later, they had placed more than 60 people in jobs, and have even taken on one graduate themselves, a former pilot who is now managing their warehouse.
Others have been employed by firms including Wealleans and Waharoa-based horticulture company LeaderBrand.
AgDrive not only gives trainees the driver training but also supports them in their job applications.
Along with redeploying Ag Technology engineers, they have taken on four new staff for AgDrive, and have just signed a contract with the Primary ITO to run both tractor driving and motorbike and quad driving microcredential courses for NZQA credits.
Aimed at people already in employment, the week-long tractor course will have intakes of 10 or 11, while the bike training is set to become a twice-weekly, two-day course, with a 10-strong intake for each.
General manager Janine Peters says the AgDrive ITO initiative came after they were looking for other avenues to ensure the business’s long-term future.
Early signs were encouraging after Syben’s wife posted the news on their Facebook page.
“All I heard all night was ‘ping’ ‘ping’ on her phone. It was inquiry, just unbelievable,” Syben says.
They have built an indoor bike training track at the back of their warehouse, meaning the training can be held in all weathers. It is carpeted with astroturf Syben bought before Christmas from the Cambridge tennis courts, with the planned track in mind.
But they are also looking at taking the offering on-farm for employers such as iwi with a large number of employees on grouped farms
Ag Technology is also growing its Diesel Tune business with the addition of imported TJM four-by-four accessories, the first time they have sold a physical product through the business.
Meanwhile, their 2500 sq m warehouse, a business which they started just before Covid lockdown,
is almost full.
