'What if we just weigh the front half?' innovator wins national agritech award

Optiweigh, pioneered by Bill and Jacqui Mitchell, received the overall Australian Agritech of the Year Award for their in-paddock cattle scales.

"It was an absolutely incredible occasion and an incredible honour," Mr Mitchell said.

Optiweigh was a finalist for the Best Livestock award as well as the Best Founder and Best Scale-up.

From there they went on to win the agritech of the year across all categories.

"The ag-tech community is great, some of the things that some of the other companies around Australia are doing in the ag-tech space at the moment are just amazing, so it's great to be a part of."

Mr Mitchell said the idea for the in-paddock weigh system was borne out of trying to solve a problem he had encountered in day-to-day operations on the grass-fed backgrounding and fattening operation he runs with his wife and children Sophie and Henry, on the Northern Tableands.

"Essentially we were trying to weigh cattle, and what would happen is that the animals would not stand on the platform with all four feet.

"So then the hypothesis became; what's the correlation between weighing the front half of the animal only and the overall weight? The correlation as it turned out is pretty good."

Mr Mitchell turned to testing designs to the scale when drought forced them to destock in 2019.

"All in all there have been maybe five years of trial work. From the initial design and working through how to make the design efficient, where you're not having to take more time and effort than you save, that was key."

The Optiweigh system is fully self-contained and is ready to start weighing animals within minutes of set up. There is no extra infrastructure required and cattle need no training or restricted access to feed or water.

"It's a data-driven technology. The ability to make fast and accurate decisions about livestock and having the data available at your fingertips, whether you're working on the farm or remotely is what it's all about.

"Better data means better decisions that increase productivity and profitability."

Mr Mitchell said the company currently employs 13 full-time staff in Armidale where they do everything from hardware through to steel work and electronics, assembly, and app development.

"We're quite proud that we have been able to get our business to a point where we are employing local people, that means a lot to us.

"We also get quite a lot of business outsourced from Ramage in Guyra and also Armidale soda blasting, we have many business partners and friends who have helped us along the way and we feel thankful and grateful to each and every one of them as well as our amazing team, both past and present."