Dr Darren Oemcke
BEng(Agr), MEngSc(Env), MMgt(Utilities), PhD(Eng), DipWSET, GAICD
Marketing Director, Hydra Consulting
Darren is a highly regarded agricultural, process, and environmental engineer, management consultant and facilitator with 35-years experience in beverages, manufacturing, agriculture, agribusiness, water, mining, and environment.
He has a strong technology background in Agri- and enviro- technology. He ran Agricultural Engineering R&D for the NT Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries. He managed biosolids recycling and Asia-Pacific R&D for United Water (French multinational Veolia) and has been a consultant for GHD, Arris and Hydra Consulting. He was CEO of wine product development and engineering company Provisor. Darren has designed and specified water, wastewater and biosolids treatment plants, pipelines, undertaken environmental and Native Title approvals for a range of engineering projects, undertaken manufacturing efficiency work in metals and food manufacturing and been responsible for full-scale pilots in water treatment and food tech.
Darren has extensive experience in complex Program Management and governance. He has managed highly complex programs in forestry, mining, and water management including projects with over 20 companies delivering outcomes within 6-months and multi-million projects with over 30 enabling contracts. He reviewed program management of over $0.5b of water infrastructure projects.
Darren’s extensive experience in capability building ranges from mentoring start-ups, mentoring businesses on market entry to the development of sector wine training initiatives in export and tourism and the development of software tolls to support market entry. In addition to Hydra Consulting, Darren Lectures at Adelaide University on Wine Retail, Wine Business Research Projects and runs short courses on entrepreneurship in the wine sector.
He has considerable experience in governance of non-conventional organisations; he is past Chair of Surfing SA, past Chair of Riverland Wine and has been on the board of several research and commercialisation organisations (a CRC, a National Centre, a Major National Research Facility, un-incorporated and incorporated joint ventures), and technology companies in AI visual sorting, data visualisation, manufacturing scheduling and consumer recommendations. He also works on the preparation of tech start-ups for sale including IPO and trade sale.
Darren has co-founded and exited a successful data visualisation start-up and co-founded a business with a focus on creating compelling wine experiences for wine collectors.
He has mentored over 100 start-ups in a wide range of sectors including micro mobility, dyes, non-animal leather, carbon capture and storage, agricultural robotics, machinery, data visualisation, pattern recognition, and additive manufacturing in metals and resins. Darren co-founded the world’s first WineTech accelerator FOMENT where is the head coach. He led the South Australian Government’s AgTech start-up mentoring program and the start-up coaching in CSIRO’s India-Australia RISE Accelerator program. He has been twice nominated for mentor of the year by South Australian start-ups and has mentored in international Accelerators such as MassChallenge and the Conduit Accel hyper accelerator.
Darren has published in international peer reviewed journals on water treatment, community attitudes to water reuse, and forestry policy and won two research awards in water recycling, and biosolids mgmt. Darren has a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering, a master’s degree and a PhD in environmental engineering. He also has a master’s degree in management, qualifications in disruption from Harvard’s HBS and is a graduate of the AICD. He also has a WSET diploma in wine.
Examples of Darren’s project work includes:
Leads the delivery of Western Australia Wines to the World
Review of hazardous inversion spray drift for the South Australian Grains sector
Implementation of the action plan for reducing inversion spray drift in the South Australian grains sector
Completion of economic analysis of biofuel, tourism, agricultural, and manufacturing projects
Leadership team for the Delivered the Yarra Valley Water Aurora food precinct concept plan and land use options
Led the Hydra Consulting team that delivered the South Australian Spirits Blueprint
Stood up the South Australian Global Export Accelerator
Project managed delivery of the Southeast Water Science Review Project
Developed the first international sector-based carbon calculator for wine
Reviewed over $0.5bn of water asset capital projects
Prepared implementation plans for a range of water management plans
Undertakes annual survey and prepares environmental reports for Grain Producers SA
Onkaparinga Council waste management review
Delivered the Northern Adelaide Plains Value Chain analysis
Lang Lang / Koo Wee Rup Sewage Treatment Plants: Options for Recycled Water Use
Review of cluster investment options for South Australian primary production
Review of the South Australian AgTech startup initiative and
Development of AskSASI.com.au, an LLM to support environmental credentials in food export.