New Zealand-based Xenacom, an agricultural software developer, is settling into its second home in Ames, after a surprisingly swift orientation with the state over the past 18 months.

“It’s unusual that a partnership like this would come together so quickly,” said Tina Hoffman, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Economic Development. “It’s great to have this type of success early on that we can point to as we go forward.”

Xenacom and state leaders from Iowa first crossed paths in the summer of 2003 at a Biotechnology Industry Organization conference. Xenacom, a six-year-old company at the time, had outgrown the local market for its leading product, Xen-Agri, and was looking to add the agronomic market to its business. Right away, Iowa stood out as a desirable location for Xenacom’s U.S. headquarters.

“We did not need a count of the number of seed companies here to know that this was the area we needed to be,” said David Lilly, Xenacom’s U.S. account manager. “We’ve been in contact with seed companies for the past couple of years and knew that many of the main ones are based in this area. We felt that if we were going to do agronomics, where better to be than in the heart of the agronomic industry of all of America? That is why we set up here.”

Xenacom, with help from a $10,000 Comprehensive Management Award from IDED, moved into the Iowa State University Research Park in early December. Lilly and a support person, Lisa Jeffares, comprise the local team at this time. Now that the company is here, Lilly said the plan is to focus on fine-tuning Xen-Agri to meet the needs of companies that develop and test seed varieties.

“Our Xen-Agri product standardizes the way that companies do their trials and it basically speeds up the processes for getting these varieties to the commercial market,” Lilly said.

Xen-Agri acts as a Web-based collection point for seed trialing information, making it easier for companies to compare different seed varieties when work is in progress in different parts of the country or the world.

“The power of the information is to have it all in one place so you can analyze it,” Lilly said. “Our software uses hand-held computers or can collect information straight off the combine harvesters. A product development guy based in Israel can analyze the information that was collected here in Iowa. Especially with agronomics companies that have departments all over the world, having all this information in one place is a huge benefit.”

Lilly said Xen-Agri can be customized to work with any sort of trialing process, from tractors to flowers, and can be scaled for projects of different sizes. Until now, Xen-Agri has been used primarily in the vegetable seed industry, he said.

“Although we initially targeted vegetable seed companies, because that was where our knowledge was, the program was designed to trial anything,” Lilly said.

Xen-Agri is used in New Zealand, Australia, Holland and in California. Xenacom’s growth has been brisk, placing it 14th in the Deloitte/Unlimited Fast 50 Index in 2004, but the company realized that Xen-Agri was reaching a plateau in the vegetable seed industry.

“There were basically no other customers in New Zealand that we could grow with, so it was a natural choice to expand to a new market,” Lilly said. “To break into the agronomic industry, we will continue working closely with the university (ISU) and hopefully partner with an agronomic company to do a little bit of development so that we can make the product exactly what they want.”

Xenacom’s location in the ISU Research Park complements its company’s headquarters in Hamilton, New Zealand, where it is located in the Waikato Innovation Park, a part of nearby Waikato University.

“There’s quite a synergy between what we have here and how we were set up in New Zealand,” Lilly said. “Down the road, we want to do more work in the breeding side of the industry, and we’ve thought about acquiring someone from the local university to help us with our analysis.”

Since Xenacom is still a new name in Iowa and in agronomics, it is still establishing itself with local seed companies and deciding how to customize Xen-Agri to improve analysis of corn and soybeans.

“A year from now, we will be expanding with clients in this area, and we will probably be hiring some American people for our sales staff,” Lilly said. “We will continue to support our vegetable seed customers and we’re looking at the flower market as well.”

IDED will also be watching Xenacom’s success closely, although just having the country move here is an accomplishment, Mike Blouin, IDED’s director, pointed out when the company announced it would open an Ames office.

“It’s nice to have a successful, dynamic high-tech company locate in Iowa when it could choose to locate anywhere in the world,” Blouin said. “We will point to this success as we work with other New Zealand and international prospects to prove that Iowa is a great choice for high-tech efforts.”