STARTING from a clean sheet of paper has seen young engineer and designer Frances Cook deliver Australia’s latest orchard sprayer on time and on budget.

By any yardstick it’s a noteworthy achievement for the confident but quietly-spoken graduate who headed up the sizeable $1 million initiative on behalf of employer Silvan Australia.

Company managing director Stephen Lelli said he was impressed by her short stint in the automotive sector prior to heading up the company’s design team in 2007, a year after graduating with a Bachelor of Engineering in product design.

Presented with Silvan’s exciting challenge to create a modern and advanced orchard sprayer, the upshot is the Supaflow G2 unit which made its debut at the prestigious Sebel Heritage Hotel in Victoria’s Yarra Valley late last week, where it was roundly applauded by Silvan’s dealers.

Ms Cook conceded she never envisaged getting into the business of designing farm machinery, recalling her early first impressions of a largely male-dominated industry, which also has a rapidly ageing workforce.

Two years down the track has convinced her of the opportunities that exist within agriculture, commenting: “No two days are the same.”

But it was a very different story when the slightly-nervous Swinburne University graduate showed her portfolio of engineering drawings to Silvan’s senior executives, who were impressed with her appreciation of mechanical equipment design, design for manufacture and consumer-driven design capabilities.

With the company keen to gain a “fresh input” into their Next Generation range of sprayers, Ms Cook was given the nod by Silvan, embarking on a hectic two years criss-crossing Australia to garner ideas from orchardists, farmers, plus the company’s dealer network.

Having landed “a dream job”, the challenge remained of managing a project with tight timelines and budgets.