Darren Oemcke

Darren is a management consultant, engineer, educator and company director who specialises in helping organisations to adapt, improve and grow.

His core skills are in strategy and its implementation, process engineering, exporting, customers, business development, digital transformation and start-ups. He most frequently works in the wine, food, water and agriculture sectors.

Darren is a director Hydra Consulting, AI-microscopy start-up GoMicro, and on the advisory boards OpenTute, an innovative e-Learning platform and Ailytic, an AI-based manufacturing scheduling startup. He co-founded of high-end experience-based wine tourism business, Invina and recently recently exited (sold at 6x) data visualisation start-up Bowerbase, which he co-founded in 2015. Darren is an investor in learning design automation start-up, Coursebox and Chair of Surfing South Australia.

His global work has given him a great understanding of business environments. This includes becoming effective within English and French multinational companies, work effectively with the UN and undertaking substantial projects for Global Chinese, US and Portuguese companies. Darren has also worked in partnership with Australian, NZ, South African and Californian wine industry organisations. He has travelled widely in France the US and the UK (and occasionally Italy and Germany) on business in the wine and water sectors.

Key areas of skill & expertise

Case Studies

Wine Australia:

• Growing Wine Exports, export growth program for the Australian Wine Industry
• Wine Australia Growing Wine Tourism, in-bound tourism development program for Australian cellar doors
• Growing Cider Exports, export program for the Australian craft cider industry

Wine Victoria:

• China Wine Academy - mentoring for businesses entering the Chinese wine market

Department for Trade and Industry, SA Export Fundamentals Program:

• online implementation including design and development of their Online Learning Platform

National Wine Centre:

• Develop storylines and business model for revitalised tourism experiences

Australian China Business Council:

• China Business Accelerator - Pitching competition

Inland Wine Regions Alliance:

• International wine price benchmarking

SA Government and FOMENT collaborators:

• Manage Australia's first International wine and tourism tech start-up accelerator

International Association of the vine and wine (OIV) and 4 international partners:

• First sector-based international carbon calculator