THE INNOVATORS
TechniPharm’s Simple and Effective Farm Product Solutions
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ew Zealand–based TechniPharm International Ltd. is a leading supplier of specialized agricultural equipment solutions and related services, primarily oriented toward dairy, beef, and sheep farming. Its overriding focus is on making farming easier, and to accomplish that, it creates products that are easy to use and install. One of them is the Ecobag, an enclosed storage system for water and effluent. In this interview, TechniPharm Group CEO Harmen Heesen tells Irrigation Leader about the company’s history and its products. Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background.
This Ecobag is equipped with a separator that removes fiber from the effluent stored inside. The remaining liquid can be used for washing the yard or can be injected into a pivot irrigation system to use as fertilizer. The fiber is composted or distributed to pasture or cropping land.
Harmen Heesen: I emigrated from the Netherlands to New Zealand in 1981. I had studied dairy farm management, general agriculture, and economics, and I came to the conclusion that New Zealand might be a nice place to explore those opportunities further. When I first arrived in the country, I got involved in farming right away and was engaged in it for a number of years. During that time, I came up with several ideas for products and services I thought could be helpful in the practice of farming, and those were the origins of what is today TechniPharm. We’ve always looked for proven, new, and innovative solutions to solve problems on farms, and our main focus has always been dairy, beef, and sheep farmers in New Zealand. We do quite a lot in animal handling facilities, such as chutes and corrals. Irrigation Leader: When was TecniPharm founded?
Irrigation Leader: What products and services does your company provide? Harmen Heesen: While our main focus is animal handling and automation, we’re also active in the environmental
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF TECHNIPHARM.
Harmen Heesen: We started in 1987 on a small scale while I was still farming. By 1993, we had grown to the point that the company became my family’s and my full-time focus. We have continued to grow since then. We’re still not a big company by any means, certainly not by the U.S. scale, but we have 25,000 farmers on the books in both New Zealand and Australia, and we have provided a huge number of products to those farmers over the years.
sector. New Zealand has rigorous new environmental standards, particularly water quality regulations, that govern how farmers can dispose of dairy effluent and use chemical fertilizers. We do a lot of work in effluent storage facilities, which is where our Ecobag and Flexitank R products come into play. In general, there is a lot of open storage of effluents in New Zealand, which results in the rapid loss of quite a lot of nitrogen and the expulsion of greenhouse gases. Neither of those things are ideal from an environmental point of view. The Ecobag is a completely enclosed system that negates those problems. The Ecobag also avoids crusting and bad smells and prevents rainwater from getting into the storage system. The Ecobag can also provide clean water storage, which can be useful for several reasons. There are farmers who depend on irrigation water but rely on a limited source, such as a well or river, that does not provide enough water for frequent irrigation. They would benefit from a storage solution. Evaporation is also a big problem in some areas, particularly in the South Island, where there are warm winds, a lot of sunshine, and little rain. Also, some irrigation systems, such as drip irrigation systems, require fairly clean water without debris, rubbish, or algae. That is another factor that makes closed storage systems like the Ecobag more attractive. The Ecobag is available in a standard square model or in models that are rectangular, round, or other shapes and sizes. We’re working in tandem with the Europe-based manufacturer Wiefferink BV, which also supplies a lot of biogas plants throughout Europe. The Ecobag can be manufactured in a multitude of sizes up to 15,000 cubic
