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The Southland inventor of edible bale net wrap KiwiEconet, Grant Lightfoot, is exporting the first containers of the product to Europe this year.
Not only that, but Lightfoot has been rubbing shoulders with royalty.
He told Farmers Weekly that when he exhibited the edible bale net, made from jute, a flaxlike fibre, in England at the Groundswell agriculture show last year, Prince William came by to have a look and hear about the product.
Later this year Lightfoot is off to Europe to meet with the royals’ farm managers, who want to use the netting on their farms.
The British royals have over 40,000 hectares of farm land.
Lightfoot became fed up with seeing animals eat plastic bale nets left behind in paddocks, saying animals die with stomachs full of the netting.
Traditional netting cannot be recycled like bale wrap, and as such government schemes, such as the newly announced farm plastic recycling scheme, won’t make a dent, he said.
The problem is so big that last year Alliance Group asked farmers to ensure all plastic baleage wrap and twine is removed from paddocks after feeding out.
In a newsletter the processor said it was seeing an increasing number of cases where wrap and twine are making it through to processing after livestock eat it.
At its Mataura plant, key equipment was being blocked.
Most nets are still burned or buried, or are left in paddocks.
The Southland inventor of edible bale net wrap KiwiEconet, Grant Lightfoot, with Prince William at the Groundswell agricultural show in England last year. The royals, who own 40,000 hectares of farmland, hope to use the netting on their farms. Photo: Supplied
When Farmers Weekly spoke to Lightfoot he was at the airport on his way to India to see the manufacturer.
He was recently nominated for five categories of the 2026 Earthshot Prize, an environmental award set up by Prince William.
There is one container on the way to Switzerland, which will be followed by five more and then 10, he said.
He is also off to Diddly Squat Farm, belonging to Jeremy Clarkson of Clarkson’s Farm fame, in June, to showcase his product at an agricultural show the farm hosts.
Lightfoot said the product is now taking off locally and internationally, but to fund the business he is working six jobs – which include farming deer, operating a logging business and grazing dairy cattle on a lease block.
Local sales will be done through a local distributor.