Gallagher technology: keeping out wolves and bears, and now in NZ gardens, the next door neighbour’s pesky cat

Lisbeth Jacobs, chief executive, Gallagher Group animal management division.

Electric fencing pioneer Gallagher Group has entered the Kiwi household consumer market with pet fencing, technology it offers Europeans to keep wolves from the door.

An old hand at keeping monkeys out of villages, humans, livestock and hungry wildlife separated, and lately, elephants off railway tracks in Tanzania, the Hamilton-founded and headquartered multi-national this week introduced garden pet security technology to retail shelves in New Zealand.

Gallagher Animal Management division chief executive Lisbeth Jacobs said a range of fencing technology has been offered in Europe for some time, whether to keep the neighbour’s cat out of the garden, chickens safe from foxes, or stop wolves and boars, now with protected status and returning in numbers, venturing close to homes and eating family pets. In Canada and the US, Gallagher fencing keeps bears from the backyard.

“It’s a natural progression for us. We are so good at delivering electric fencing that is user-friendly and works. It’s been a need that’s not well-covered,” said Jacobs.

The animal management business - Gallagher also has a security division, which supplies technology to some of the world’s most sensitive and heavily guarded business sites - was taking “a much more deliberate approach” to providing solutions, she said.

“We’re no longer just in the agriculture sector - we’re in the consumer sector now.”

While the security business is snapping at its heels, animal management is still Gallagher’s biggest business, its revenue growing by 52 per cent between FY20 and FY24 to close the latest financial period at $225 million.

Belgium-born Jacobs, who has a PhD in engineering, joined the Gallagher-family owned company three years ago, when global animal management revenue was $170m. The division’s compound annual growth rate had averaged 9 per cent between 2020 and this year, despite the pandemic and economic volatility, she said.

The division employs 450 staff globally, including in its manufacturing bases in Hamilton and Australia. Of these, 100 work in Australia, where the division also has a trial farm. It has wholly-owned distribution operations in the US, Canada and Chile, and in Europe operates a 50:50 joint venture. Another joint venture in South Africa covers the African continent and there’s a partnership business in Japan set up 50 years ago by Sir William Gallagher, son of company founder Bill Gallagher who invented the electric fence.

Sir William Gallagher, former CEO and chairman of the Gallagher Group, founded by his father, electric fence inventor, Bill Gallagher in 1938.

Jacobs said the animal management business has “a whole lot of opportunities to grow”, particularly in the US, Canada and Latin America.

With her arrival at the business, it pivoted from a product-driven model to “purpose-driven”.

Jacobs said that’s not just marketing-speak.

“We have been using this approach internally for the last two or three years to really look at how we support our farming community. We used to do that heavily through selling products. That worked and worked well, people could find the products they needed with us, but we wanted to flip that around and say, “first, let’s understand what jobs our customers are trying to get done”.

“Once we understand that we can identify areas we can help them, maybe where a product doesn’t even exist yet. Farmers want to manage their land. It’s not just about building a fence, we ask what other problems do they have?

“If they want to know if they’ve got water (in troughs for example) they have to get on their bike or walk to the point. (We said) wouldn’t it be great if we could help them with a solution where they can see on their phone if they have water with satellite water-monitoring solutions and an app.

“We find solutions for what jobs they want to do, rather than saying ‘we’ve got an energiser, we could make it bigger or stronger, anyone want it?’. We flipped that around and develop product from that. We’re being a bit more inquisitive and reflective.”

The strategy led to an organisational change and five new product solution business categories.

They include an animal handling category and a land and water care category.

“Within land and care we are looking at liquid fertiliser monitoring. We’re looking at fuel monitoring, grain silo monitoring - all satellite connected so a farmer can manage it all through sensors.

“We are going to be launching a new lithium range of solar energisers. That’s quite a big development which we are rolling out around the world. We’re trying to move more into permanent fencing, replacing barbed wire. It’s not used much in New Zealand but a lot of countries are still using it and it’s awful for animals. We also have the ‘talking’ fence which tells you if you have a breach or not which gives big ranchers peace of mind.”

The environment, sustainability and climate change are all top of mind in the strategy, said Jacobs.

“The eShepherd helps farmers keep stock out of waterways and helps drive the profitability of the herd by putting the farmer a lot closer to what animals are doing.”

The eShepherd is a solar powered, GPS enabled, livestock neckband enabling farmers to remotely track, manage, fence and move livestock around the farm.

Gallagher's eShepherd is proving a boon for US ranchers trying to manage livestock in vast open spaces.

In line with its practice of investing in tech start ups, helping them grow and taking over when expertise in achieving scale is called for, Gallagher has bought out eShepherd and brought all its manufacturing back to Hamilton from China. The product was useful when Gallagher helped farming casualties of Cyclone Gabrielle, when hundreds of kilometres of fencing were destroyed. Jacobs said it is also a boon for regenerative farming efforts, for example in the US which has vast open spaces with low stock density where pastoral farming practices can’t be applied.

“They can now apply some of those rotational grazing practices. Suddenly they can start regenerative farming.”

Is the new strategy paying off?

“Absolutely. Even looking internally it’s giving our people much more sense of purpose of what they’re doing and why - helping farmers be more productive and supporting sustainability.”

Australia and the US are the division’s biggest markets, each responsible for around 35 per cent of business. New Zealand, where Gallagher is dominant, is around 15 per cent, Jacobs said. There’s now an office in Chile.

Jacobs sees “rapid growth” coming in this country, the rest of Latin America, US and Canada “we’re nowhere near the 50 per cent market share we have in our home markets”.

“We’re not like other players. We have one global competitor that offers a wide range of products but it’s not presenting the ‘fully connected partner story’, though that might come. Otherwise we have a lot of smaller, very localised competitors. A handful in France and Germany, some in the US and Canada, but typically very localised and just offering electric fencing or virtual fencing.

“They’re not providing the full solution. And we can also offer a lot of advice.”

Andrea Fox joined the Herald as a senior business journalist in 2018 and specialises in writing about the dairy industry, agribusiness, exporting and the logistics sector and supply chains.