“It was a brilliant experience which we were able to make the most of because of the organised, professional and ever helpful guidance of the innovations team,” says Bruce.

Bruce’s invention is ‘The Kage’, which he designed to protect water trough valves and arms from being damaged, usually by stock getting rough when water supply can’t keep up with demand.

“It can be a daunting road to go down when starting out with a new invention and no knowledge of how to proceed. The Innovations Centre was the perfect way to give people like us the help we needed to be able to take our inventions further. What a truly inspirational place.” Bruce says nothing was too much trouble – the team accommodated all requests and solved all logistical problems with a smile and immediate action.

“Having the LAB in the middle with all of those experts available to us for the entire week was unbelievably helpful and we came away armed with so much more knowledge and more of a plan on where to go from now on.

“I cannot recommend this experience highly enough,” says Bruce. Each year the Fieldays Innovations Centre receives extensive media coverage as the world looks to New Zealand to lead innovation for the agricultural sector, improving farming practices in New Zealand and beyond. It is the ideal place to demonstrate ground-breaking developments, whether they are backyard inventions or professional innovations, to thousands of Fieldays visitors. The Fieldays Innovation Awards showcases inventions from New Zealand with an aim to establish their success by introducing them to the marketplace and facilitating networks to commercial success.

A number of individuals and companies have launched new products and innovations at Fieldays and gone on to achieve global success.

In 2017 once again, approved entrants from dairy and drystock farming, horticulture, information and communication technology, cloud and mobile-based software, animal health and genetics, water and waste management, environment and clean-tech, animal and farm management, farm safety and leading research, will showcase their innovation in the Fieldays Innovations Centre at the heart of Fieldays. The Innovations Centre is hugely popular with the public and a not-to-be missed part of Fieldays.