AbacusBio to open Canada office

Photo: ODT files
Photo: ODT files
AbacusBio is continuing to go global.

The Dunedin-based agribusiness company is opening an office in Canada as part of its strategy to increase its footprint.

Managing director Dr Peter Amer is heading to Edmonton in several weeks for the office launch. The office will open with a team of four, including AbacusBio partner Dr John Crowley.

Already, AbacusBio had a solid number of clients in the North American market and the Canadian opportunity was part of a bigger restructure of how the company operated, Dr Amer said.

It was going through shareholder agreements and revision of its constitution to be more internationally scalable.

AbacusBio had attracted "really good people" to Dunedin and could attract more people by having other locations they could go to that suited, and also for people to be able to move around the locations.

Five years ago, the company opened a United Kingdom office in Edinburgh and that had been "a big success", he said.

One of the things learned from that was it could be successful in ways not initially envisaged.

"That’s given us even more confidence with the opportunity in Canada, knowing there will be opportunities sitting there we’re not aware of.

"You don’t have to have everything nailed out when you’re going in. Go in with the right ingredients and intentions and respond to what unfolds," he said.

Work in the Edmonton office would mainly be around cattle genetics — both beef and dairy — which was one of AbacusBio’s core areas.

It had done business with United States-based breed societies and there was an opportunity to build a team that was close to support them.

Among the wider AbacusBio team, there were alumni of Canadian universities, including Dr Amer who spent three years in Canada and completed his PhD at the University of Guelph.

Peter Amer
Peter Amer
Canada was a relatively easy country to set up and do business in and it was nice to be able to "put something back there", he said.

The confidence to open the business was largely driven by the "flourishing" partnership with multinational company Bayer.

In 2020, a partnership between the two companies around predictive plant breeding was announced. Under the agreement, Bayer incorporated AbacusBio’s expertise in trait prioritisation and valuation to advance products that anticipated grower and market needs.

Dr Amer said that partnership had proven very successful.

"They bring the scale and impact, we bring fresh thinking and innovation into an area of their business where they don’t have that expertise."

The impact of AbacusBio’s work was spread over hundreds of millions of hectares of crops grown globally with Bayer’s seeds.

AbacusBio was exploring the idea of more partnerships, with Dr Amer saying it was not always best for it to "do everything everywhere", to maximise impact in both New Zealand and internationally.

In the past year, staff numbers at AbacusBio had increased from 45 to 55. There were 15 working out of the UK hub.

The quality of job applicants was "amazing" and he attributed that to AbacusBio’s brand and profile and also that it was "something different".

"We’ve a reputation for being a little bit different and a little bit fun and interesting. It’s those sorts of things that appeal," he said.

AbacusBio was finishing a fairly substantial transition phase and it was "time to draw breath a little bit and cement things in" before looking to take another step.

While Dr Amer expected further growth in Dunedin in terms of head count, that would not be as fast as outside the city as the big opportunities for growth were international because its work was so specialised.

As far as the current situation in New Zealand, challenges and disruption was good for consultants. A lot was happening around greenhouse gas mitigation and there was a lot of opportunity there.

"That is a strength of ours in terms of genetic improvement," he said.

National’s recent announcement that it would end New Zealand’s ban on gene editing and genetic modification had the potential to "stir up a lot of new thinking" around science and genetics and it would be a challenging but interesting topic going forward.

Primary industries around the world were facing challenges with fluctuating environments and genetics had to be part of the solution, he said.

Dr Amer, who has been involved in the business since its inception in 2001, said it was very satisfying seeing its success.

sally.rae@odt.co.nz