Perth tech company founded by brothers wins innovator of the year award for grain analysis

A Perth-based technology company has been recognised for its work in rapid grain analysis, taking home the State Government’s 2024 WA innovator of the year award. Deimos won the this year’s prestigious Rio Tinto growth innovation award for its visual analysis device, which can assess a half-litre grain sample using custom-designed hardware and deep-learning algorithms. Deimos co-founder and executive director Jeremy Hadfield said everyone in the team was excited to receive the award. “Getting this recognition feels fantastic, not just for us but for both the Deimos and CBH teams, who have been working long nights and going above and beyond to get this device and software to where it is today,” he said. “Without them, none of this would have been possible.” Mr Hadfield founded Deimos with his brothers Andrew and Peter in 2020, and they have been working with the CBH Group ever since. “The idea of being able to automate visual grain analysis has been a ‘holy grail’ for bulk handlers for a long time,” Andrew Hadfield said. “Through our software company, Phobos Consulting, we’ve developed a reputation for solving hard problems, and established a good working relationship with CBH. “We were eager to try our hand at a problem that no one had managed to solve.” In 2022, CBH and Deimos formed a collaboration agreement to develop a device that could be a companion to the grain analysis and classification software CBH was developing. “While we were starting the project, It was very apparent to us that we could solve the software side of this problem, but there was no machine or anything on the market that could do the job that the software needed it to do,” Jeremy Hadfield said. “So we —Andrew, myself and our brother Peter — just started prototyping in our sheds and garages to try and think about how we could make a machine that could do the job that needed to be done.” The brothers also enlisted the help of an old family friend, Richard McFarlane, to help create the prototype. Deimos successfully presented the prototype to CBH in 2021, and while the brothers said the job had its hurdles, they created a high-quality product that will be valuable for bulk grain handlers. “Andrew and I likened it to hitting roadblock after roadblock after roadblock, and overcoming those,” Jeremy Hadfield said. “They (CBH) set a very high bar for the algorithms and for this machine. They had to be very accurate. “It made it a very difficult task to do, but also . . . it became a very valuable product, something that is so accurate and is very attractive to bulk handlers at their receival sites.”