Innovators and entrepreneurs often say, “Don’t try and reinvent the wheel,” but Craig McCloskey of Bluefield Seeding Solutions in Prince Edward Island did just that.

His invention, the press wheel, makes planting potatoes faster and more efficient. He's created an attachment that can be fitted onto an existing piece of machinery, which is called a planter and which ensures that potato crops are adequately spaced for successful growth.  

The press wheel works by distributing the seeds at a uniform space and rolling a heavy wheel over them, pressing the potatoes into the dirt. This process eliminates what potato farmers call “set roll”.

“The seed, or what we call the set, rolls on the ground after it’s released from the planter,” said McCloskey, the founder of Bluefield Seeding Solutions, in an interview. “So that set roll is what creates randomness in the spacing. Over the last ten years, people in agriculture are becoming more aware of precision in planting and that’s when I kind of realized there’s a trend here and started building something.”

This week, McCloskey received an investment of $180,000 from Island Capital Partners, a Venture Capital group based in Charlottetown. This is the sixth investment made by Island Capital which has also supported Island Water Technologies, Onset Communications and Garago Software.

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McCloskey, the sole member of the business, plans to use the investment to support working capital and company growth. McCloskey has been a potato farmer in North Wiltshire for 27 years and began prototyping the wheel on his 150-acre farm in 2013.

“I’ve always enjoyed fixing problems on the farm,” he said. “When I started to work on this, I realized there was potential and that I could possibly capitalize on what I made so I decided to patent it.”

Bluefield also has a manufacturing and distribution agreement with Allan Farm Equipment in Covehead, PEI. Through this partnership, McCloskey has manufactured and sold a total of 12 press wheel kits across PEI and New Brunswick.

“We were searching for that ‘it’ product, something that will be a real value to our customers and our company,” said Trent Cousins, who works at Allan Farm Equipment, in a statement.

“As soon as we heard about the press wheel we immediately knew it was perfect for Allan.”

With the investment from Island Capital, McCloskey plans to start marketing campaigns to roll out the press wheel to the rest of Atlantic Canada, and eventually world-wide.

Right now, he’s just developing products for potato farming but he’s sure he will cross over into corn and soybean crops too. And he also hopes to tap into a new trend that is moving through the agriculture industry--data collection.

“Now the latest trend is all about data, and data collection. With this new product, it will help us collect and monitor data for planting.”

He said: “I’m a potato farmer but in this day and age you also have to be a businessman.”