Bessemer leads Series C for New Zealand’s Halter
Bessemer Venture Partners has led a NZD 85m (USD 53.3m) Series C round for New Zealand’s Halter, a start-up that makes solar-powered collars for managing cow herds with an app.
Blackbird Ventures, Promus Ventures, DCVC, and Icehouse Ventures also participated, as did Peter Beck, founder and CEO of New Zealand space tech leader Rocket Lab. Bessemer, Promus, and DCVC have all made investments in Rocket Lab, which listed on NASDAQ in 2021 at a valuation of USD 4.1bn.
It follows a NZD 32m Series B in 2021 led by Blackbird with support from DCVC, Promus, Beck, and Ubiquity Ventures. K1W1 - another Rocket Lab investor - and Ice Angels provided seed funding in 2016, while a Series A of NZD 8m in 2018 featured DCVC, Founders Fund, Ice Angels, and K1W1.
“The market is very different than it has been in the past, but I think the quote going around is that ‘great companies are still being funded’ and I think you've got to be in that category. So that’s the goal,” Halter CEO Craig Piggot told New Zealand’s National Business Review.
“It’s always just a question of when the timing is right. And this time around [Bessemer was] very excited with the progress and keen to lead.”
Bessemer’s Asia exposure outside of India is limited and it has done little in agriculture generally, although Piggot said the firm had been in talks for “some years” prior to backing Halter. Bessemer closed its latest global VC fund with USD 3.8bn in commitments last September.
Halter’s cow collars are GPS-enabled and allow dairy farmers to virtually fence a herd, as well as remotely monitor its health, feeding, and behaviour.
The technology is based on sound and vibration, which are used to guide cows to and from the shed or between paddocks. No farmer or third party controls the strength or frequency of the signals.
The goal is to increase output, animal welfare, and sustainability standards – but especially to reduce on-farm time and labour requirements. Milking cows is not highly paid and jobs are hard to fill. The work is seasonal and taxing, involving up to 18-hour days in the field.
“We spoke to one customer who’s actually completely changed the way they farm,” Samantha Wong, Blackbird’s New Zealand head, told AVCJ at the time of the Series B.
“They’ve moved to year-round milking, which means they can do it at 9 a.m. That aligns with women in the town who do school drop-off and gives them a bunch of hours in the middle of the day. It’s unlocking this untapped labour supply that wants the year-round work but can’t be in a muddy field at 4 a.m.”
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