In November 2022, we exhibited at the Agri-TechE Reap Show at the Hinxton Hall Conference Centre, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton. It hosted the REAP 2022 conference, organised by Agri-TechE.
Our Technical Sales Manager, Andrew Boyd shares his experience of the event.
Attending Exhibitions
One of the best aspects about my role at Grant Instruments is the exhibitions we get to attend and the customers we get to present equipment to. That said, I’ve always felt it was a shame that we could never take our biggest, brightest and most application specific product that we manufacture along to them. Partly down to the logistics of transporting a 300kg system perhaps but the Bi-Directional Gradient Plate is such an impressive Grant manufactured product, tying in a number of our engineering and design capabilities, that I felt the agricultural world was really missing out!
Image: Hinxton Hall Conference Centre
REAP 2022
Thankfully this changed recently as we attended REAP, hosted by Agri-TechE at the Francis Crick Auditorium – Hinxton Hall Conference Centre. Agri-TechE are an organisation set up to provide a network for agriculture, farming, science and technology to work together and find solutions to many serious modern-day issues in the sector. It covers a wide range of aspects including analysing the right type of nutrients in soils, introducing robotics to farming techniques, reducing carbon and pollution through to what combinations of conditions give the best tasting edible flowers for restaurants (no, really!).
Image: Andrew Boyd & Mark Davison, Grant Instruments, exhibiting at REAP 2022
The event showcased some great innovation include robotic weed pickers, AI software for analysing an enormous amount of ‘farming data’ and bespoke lighting and vertical farming solutions.
Image: Robotti weed picker, Al Software
Bi-Directional Gradient Plate
As a real innovative piece in this marketplace, we managed to take along our Gradient Plate, better known as the GRD1R LH which I am pleased to say got a lot of interest and plenty of attention, particularly with the light hood beaming over the hall. As a unique product on the market, it enables users to identify key germination temperature conditions for seeds. It is a system designed to perfect the research phase before scaling up to incubation and its used by seed banks, seed research centres and crop research institutes around the world. It was very convenient that we managed to present it at such a prestigious show, right on our doorstep!
The REAP event enabled us to introduce the product to key figures in the industry and to showcase the recent design changes, including converting to natural refrigerant with a minimal global warming potential. It was particularly satisfying to have it running in partnership with the new Grant SQ16 logger as there was such an emphasis on data at the show.
Image: Temperature gradient plate for seed germination efficacy testing
Feedback
It was great to hear so much positive feedback on the unit notably about how it is designed and manufactured entirely within the UK at Grant HQ. As well as how open we are to exploring customized and bespoke lighting and data logging solutions too.
REAP was a brilliantly organized event and it is great that so much emphasis is placed on networking between agriculture and technology. Thanks to all the team at Agri-Tech. We certainly got a lot from it and FINALLY got to show off one of our most impressive Grant products.
Image: Andrew Boyd with the Bi-Directional Gradient Plate
About Grant
Grant Instruments is based in Shepreth, near Cambridge and has been established for 70 years. It is a world-leading supplier of scientific and laboratory equipment, and exports globally.
Find out more about our Bi-Directional Gradient Plate here.
If you would like to know more, please contact us:
Website: www.grantinstruments.com (with a real-time live chat function to our sales team)
Email: salesdesk@grantinstruments.com
LinkedIn: Grant Instruments (Cambridge) Ltd
