Agriculture at Airports with Nick Bloor

“I never thought I'd be chatting on an agriculture podcast.”

Founder and CEO of IVM Group, Nick Bloor describes his business as having a mission to improve people's lives through plant science. 

Whilst plants were always a passion of Nick’s, when he left school he briefly pursued a different path.

“I was going to be a lawyer and got a bit of a light bulb moment.”

“That (law) wasn't an area that I was going to be able to make a difference. And maybe that had something to do with the fact that I reckon I'd be a pretty crappy lawyer that I switched to horticulture.”

At only 19 years old, Nick founded his first business in vegetation management space. 

It all came about in a pretty wacky way. He was studying Horticulture in the Gold Coast, Queensland and met a couple of guys who worked for the local council. Their weed control contractor had just left and they asked Nick if he was interested in the work.

“I had a ute and no idea.” 

He was up for the challenge and headed off to his first job site. The council supervisor said that they needed to selectively remove weeds from the council park for a big upcoming function. 

“He [the council supervisor] said, ‘Have you got a boom spray?’ And I'm not sure whether to be proud or ashamed of this, but I turned around and said, ‘Yeah, of course, I’ve got a boom spray’... Which I didn't.”

The next day, Nick headed for Brisbane and found a local technician to help him build and fit the spray equipment to the back of his ute to get the first job underway. That park is now the Peoples First Stadium where the Gold Coast Suns play. 

“And the rest is history, as they say.”

He says he hasn’t come a long way from that point as he still runs an integrated vegetation management business…

“Vegetation management sounds like a very salubrious word for weed control. So helping governments to manage weeds in high priority places.”

“Plants have got an intrinsic role in being able to sustain the planet… I think about it as the other side of the coin, the role of plants and being able to cool the planet, to enrich people's lives and of course, give us air to breathe.”

Ever been on a plane and admired the grass surrounding the airstrip as you’re landing? Well Nick calls that a ‘green asset’.

“That's their [airports] largest living asset. And so we help them maintain that or think about how they can best maintain that safely, but also sustainably.”

One such challenge arose when Brisbane Airport encountered an issue with the Brazilian keyhole wasp—a pest known for building mud nests in aircraft instruments, posing a safety hazard. 

“Overseas, that's been quite a problem and has been the cause of, unfortunately, hundreds of deaths in aviation from blocking airspeed indicators on planes.”

“Our involvement was really from a plant science perspective. It was understanding that the best thing we could do to mitigate that was to actually manage the food source.”

“It's a predatory wasp, and it preys on caterpillars. Caterpillars, of course, don't just show up in eating crops and agriculture…”

“They eat grass around airports, and the wasps then utilise the caterpillars as a food source.”

“So we got together with our friends at Syngenta and understood how we could sustainably manage the caterpillar populations around where the planes are parked at the airport.”

“And by putting in a program to manage the caterpillar populations, that in turn has meant that the keyhole wasps no longer has the food source there and it can go elsewhere for its food.”

To us, Nick’s work is pretty mind-blowing. And he is so humble in how he talks about his business growth and their people. To Nick, people are everything.

“I don't grow a business, our people do.”

“Nothing gives me more of a buzz than seeing our people grow.”

And Nick doesn’t mean that just in terms of their business, it goes beyond that to when people go on to do amazing things in their own enterprises, or grow their own family. 

Image provided by Nick Bloor.

Nick Bloor is 2023 Syngenta Growth Award Judges Choice Award recipient, in the category of Innovation. “The goal of the growth awards is to recognise growers and advisers who are making a difference to the Industry through leadership, best practice and innovation”.

Nick’s story is one of several we are sharing in partnership with Syngenta Australia, where we are featuring the stories of the 2023 Growth Award recipients. You can learn more about the Syngenta Growth Awards and the 2023 recipients HERE.