Mantle Labs brings its world-first agriculture fintech platform to South Australia

12 Apr 2022
Mantle Labs, a UK fintech start-up that has created the world’s first agriculture fintech platform, is the latest company to receive a South Australian Landing Pad grant to support the establishment of their Australian headquarters in South Australia.
 
Mantle Labs will set up its Australian headquarters, covering the Asia Pacific region, to take advantage of South Australia’s strengths in artificial intelligence and space technologies. The company will initially employ up to three people covering sales, data science and carbon projects.
 
Mantle Labs’ revolutionary and cutting-edge platform, Geobotanics, is used by banks, insurance, crop protection, agribusiness commodity companies and farmers around the world and is the only crop monitoring platform from space which can provide daily updates with zero interference from clouds.
 
The technology enables companies to make informed decisions on rates for agri-loans and farming insurance premiums, providing benefit to farmers on new and improved sustainable finance solutions, with commodity companies, food retailers and other members of the agricultural supply chain able to better plan their business and prevent food shortages.
 
Facilitated by the Office of the Agent General and the Department for Trade and Investment’s Food, Wine and Agribusiness team, in collaboration with the Hi-tech sector team, the company selected South Australia to not only be centrally located to acquire new customers, but to also leverage the state’s strengths in artificial intelligence and space technologies.
  
South Australia’s world-leading credentials within the hi-tech sector and capabilities in artificial intelligence, machine learning and space technologies, is having a real impact on the attraction of globally innovative companies to the state, which has recently seen Microsoft Azure, Nokia, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS) establish in South Australia.
 
The establishment of Mantle Labs’ headquarters in South Australia highlights the state’s global reputation for hi-tech capabilities, whether that it is AI, machine learning, data analytics or space technologies. 
 
Mantle Labs has a partnership with AWS, which established in South Australia in February 2021, to automate the processing of satellite data from 500 million hectares of agriculture spanning six continents. 
 
By building Geobotanics on the AWS platform, Mantle Labs has drastically reduced the manual effort required to process high volumes of data using its AI algorithms. 
 
Jon Pierre, President at Mantle Labs, says South Australia has a unique combination of housing leading agribusinesses, such as Elders, the Australian space sector and leading AI researchers and universities.
 
“As an agri-fintech company leveraging satellite data, we can assist in facilitating the provision of affordable credit, insurance and agronomic advice to farmers via other members of the supply chain,” Mr Pierre said.

“Our new joint venture, Geotree, will allow for scalable monitoring of nature-based carbon projects such as those tied to regenerative agriculture and managed grazing.”
 
The South Australian Landing Pad assists companies to build a presence in the state to not only create jobs locally, but also to forge connections with local vendors, partners, customers and collaborators.

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