I was honoured recently to be invited by Western Growers to join the online tribute to the late Hank Giclas, former Director of Innovation at WG.
I first met Hank back in 2015 when I first began to focus on the emerging new investment asset class, called agritech. I was based at the time in Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley, and traveled to the Western Growers Innovation & Technology Center in Salinas, Northern California. It was the beginning of a long-standing relationship that continues today.
I met Hank during one of those early visits and together with Center Director, Dennis Donohoe, we began to discuss how the Center and New Zealand’s emerging agritech sector could potentially collaborate. In 2018, when Jacqui and I finally established Agritech New Zealand, Hank flew from the US to join us in Tauranga for the launch. I remember well our visit to the Plant & Food Research facility at Te Puke where we spent time on a kiwifruit orchard. Hank was a tall man and had to constantly keep his head low to avoid banging into the canopy. We went onto the PFR building and tasted some of Zespri / PFR’s experimental kiwifruit cultivars. For Hank, it was an important moment. He got to understand the valuable connection that exists between research and industry in New Zealand. It was a lesson he took back to the States.
Hank stepped down from his role at WG at the beginning of the pandemic. Whilst we did not meet again because of closed borders, my memories of Hank are of a gentle man who had a fierce interest in the future of his industry and a solid understanding of the growers who worked in it. He is already sadly missed.
I’m honoured to share the online tribute below: