Encore Holdings snaps up water scarcity play Halytech in second tech deal
Established last year, Encore Holdings' goal is buy and manage Australian tech companies. It's just made its second acquisition.
Encore Holdings has made its second acquisition, purchasing sensor tech company Halytech for an undisclosed amount in its quest to buy and grow small-to-mid sized Australian businesses.
The Halytech product of most interest to Encore executive chair Alex Feldman is hardware that measures and stores information on Australian dams and bores: how much water is in them and how fast it's being used.
"If I think about the future, water is going to be, and is today, a fundamental and very scarce resource that we should care about and protect," he said. "The collection of that information is really important, and doing that in through Aussie-made hardware means there is real sovereignty and protection around the data too."
Water scarcity is expected to become a more bedevilling agricultural issue in the coming decades as climate change results in longer droughts and irregular rainfall. Australia's rainfed crops will be among those most affected by such patterns, reckons the World Resources Institute, alongside India and China. Startups are sprouting around Australia to help tackle the problem, including Telstra-backed Farmbot Monitoring.
