Our work · Case study

Australian Grain Technologies

Australian Grain Technologies is Australia's leading field crop breeding company. More than a quarter of the country's cropping land is sown with AGT varieties, which means royalties, seed lots and harvest declarations flowing between growers, seed retailers, affiliates and grain buyers. Codium built the digital platform that runs it: an End Point Royalty engine, a Seed Portal and the wider Crop Improvement Platform, replacing spreadsheets and re-keyed third-party data with automated workflows and integrations.

Cloud applicationAgribusinessProcess automationERP integration
Visit agtbreeding.com.au
AGT staff portal season data screen on a monitor with a wheat crop outside
  • ClientAustralian Grain Technologies, Roseworthy, South Australia
  • IndustryAgribusiness and plant breeding
  • The workEnd Point Royalty platform, Seed Portal with grower-to-grower seed sharing, and the Crop Improvement Platform.
  • IntegrationsNational Grain Registration (NGR) API, NetSuite ERP, and multi-format grain buyer report imports.
The brief

Royalties, seed and harvest data, out of the spreadsheets

Before the platform, tracking royalties, seed sales and harvest declarations meant refactoring complex spreadsheets and legacy databases every season. Data from grain buyers and the National Grain Registration register arrived in inconsistent formats with frequent discrepancies, and finding unreported yields, managing Variety Licence Agreements and keeping an audit trail from seed distribution to grain warehouse was slow, manual work. Codium ran discovery workshops with AGT leadership, agronomists, affiliates and growers, prototyped the admin and portal interfaces, then delivered the platform in phases: core internal tools first, then the external portals and API integrations.

01

Harvest declarations

Harvest Declaration forms generated, distributed and tracked automatically, with real-time status of every grower's declaration.

02

Reconciliation Workcentre

Grain buyer reports reconciled against grower declarations with custom tolerance logic and automated accrual calculations, so unreported yields surface quickly.

03

Data ingestion

Multi-format grain buyer files parsed and normalised on import, and NGR registry data synced through nightly API runs.

04

Seed Portal and lot tracking

End-to-end provenance for seed lots, foundation seed distribution and affiliate inventory allocations.

05

Variety Licence Agreements

Online signing, version control and compliance verification for each new variety release, plus digital processing of legal grower-to-grower seed sharing.

06

NetSuite integration

Invoicing, accounts receivable and payable and customer records synced with AGT's ERP, so finance works from the same data as operations.

AGT grower season data screen on an agronomist's monitor
Season reconciliation

Weeks of spreadsheet work turned into a view that reconciles itself

Every season AGT staff were rebuilding spreadsheets to work out what each grower had harvested, sold and owed in royalties, pulling figures from grain buyers, the NGR register and their own records. We put all of those sources behind one grower view, so the balance falls out automatically and a season can be reconciled with a click instead of a week of cross-checking. The view flags discrepancies and unreported yield, so nobody has to hunt for them.

  • Harvest, sales and royalty figures from every source reconciled in one place
  • Custom tolerance logic flags the gaps worth chasing
  • Accruals calculated automatically, with the transactions behind each number a click away
  • Finance and audit get the same data, exported in seconds
Harvest declarations

Paper declarations replaced by a process that runs itself

Collecting harvest declarations from growers across the country used to mean forms, follow-ups and re-keying. We automated the generation, distribution and tracking of every declaration, so AGT can see in real time who has declared and who has not. Grain buyer sales are matched in automatically, and each declaration keeps a record of where its data came from, which gives AGT a defensible audit trail for every royalty claim.

  • Declarations generated and sent automatically, with live status per grower
  • Auto-deductor sales matched from grain buyer imports, not typed in
  • Source, method and author recorded on every declaration
  • Locked-down prior-year views for audit and disputes
AGT harvest declaration form on a monitor in a farm shed at harvest
AGT growers register on a head office monitor
Messy data, cleaned on the way in

One register for every party, fed by sources that never agreed

Growers, buyers, affiliates and variety owners were spread across legacy databases, each with its own identifiers, and the files arriving from grain buyers came in whatever format each buyer used. We built importers that parse and normalise each format on the way in, a nightly sync with the National Grain Registration API, and a single register that links every identifier a party has ever had. Staff can now find the right grower in seconds and trust that every transaction is attached to the right entity.

  • Multi-format grain buyer files normalised on import
  • Nightly NGR API sync keeps registry data current without manual work
  • Legacy IDs, NGR cards and CBH numbers resolved to one record
  • NetSuite integration keeps finance and operations on the same customer data
Seed provenance

Seed tracked from the paddock to the grower who buys it

AGT needed to know where every kilogram of foundation seed went: which paddock it was grown in, which affiliate cleaned it and which growers received it. We modelled seed production, lots and orders as one connected chain, so the provenance of any lot is a single lookup. The same chain feeds the Seed Portal, where Variety Licence Agreements are signed online and legal grower-to-grower seed sharing is processed digitally instead of on paper.

  • End-to-end provenance for foundation seed and affiliate allocations
  • Online VLA signing with version control and compliance checks
  • Grower-to-grower seed sharing handled digitally
  • Delivered in phases: internal tools first, portals and integrations after
AGT seed production record on a monitor in a seed cleaning shed office
Technology stack

How it's built

The platform is a modular web application: the EPR engine with its royalty calculations, harvest declarations and Reconciliation Workcentre; the Seed Portal with lot tracking, VLA workflows and seed sharing; and the Crop Improvement Platform for grower engagement and supply chain visibility. An integration layer handles the NGR API sync, NetSuite and the grain buyer imports.

Single page application

Built in Vue.js as a single page application, for a fast experience without page reloads and the flexibility to evolve as the system grows.

API-focused backend

The backend is built in Laravel and MySQL with an API-first interface, so the web and mobile apps share the same endpoints.

Continuous integration

Automated testing and deployment let us test new builds and update production quickly, so we can release as often as required.

Managed hosting

Amazon's Elastic Container Service runs each service in its own container within a cluster that scales up and down as needed.

Managed hosting

Running a value chain on spreadsheets and third-party exports?

If data arrives from partners in a dozen formats and someone spends harvest season re-keying it, we can fix that. Tell us where the hours go.

Get in touch More of our work
Back to our work Next case study: Country SA PHN