The AXCELA® Pellet Checker App

The AXCELA^® Pellet Checker – an agronomy app – was created for Lonza, the Swiss life-sciences company, as part of a holistic approach to the management and promotion of the entire brand.

For more than 60 years, Lonza has been the leading producer of metaldehyde, the most commonly used active substance for the control of slugs and snails. Recently, in addition to providing metaldehyde to other pellet manufacturers, it decided to launch AXCELA^® – a precision-formulated pellet for use in the agricultural sector. In addition to developing the brand and its visual identity, we needed a suite of marketing collateral – including this agronomy app – to support its launch and subsequent campaigns across a number of countries.

We thought the ‘new technology’ aspect of smartphone apps would be hugely beneficial in emphasising the precision formulation credentials of AXCELA^®. Slug pellets are essentially ‘old’ technology, with little opportunity for innovation – but if we could innovate in other ways, particularly through product support with a free agronomy app, we could offer end-users something new. The client was very responsive to the suggestion and keen to see how we could implement the app concept.

We also thought the agronomy app could address some stewardship issues. Metaldehyde has a relatively benign environmental profile (breaking down to water and carbon dioxide post-application), but it is difficult to remove from drinking water. Water companies in the UK, where drinking water is drawn from surface waters, are encouraging farmers to be more aware of weather when taking decisions about slug control. The app would reinforce those messages, with a full offline ‘library’ of technical information and advice relating to slug and snail control.

Implementation

The agronomy app concept we proposed and developed makes full use of a smartphone’s multiple capabilities. Farmers use the smartphone’s camera to photograph AXCELA^® pellets post-application. The app deploys algorithms to identify individual pellets in the photo and to confirm that the pellet distribution is correct. Farmers can save these records to a log, for transfer to farm management packages back in the farm office, allowing them to show compliance with farm assurance schemes.

The app also records the location of each calibration. Not only does this allow the farmer to attach these records to a field unit, but – after identifiable user data is stripped out – the co-ordinates can be collected centrally, showing geographic usage of metaldehyde.

The app gives farmers reassurance when applying AXCELA^® and helps to underline the importance of stewardship. Agro Mavens has managed its roll-out in several languages, and put in place an easy-to-manage back-end, allowing automatic dissemination of updates or label changes, etc.