Start-ups in limelight at Fruit Logistica

Under the motto Disrupt Agriculture, the first Start-up Day took place at the Fruit Logistica on 8 February 2019. Companies working on the digital transformation in the agricultural and food sector were given space during the Start-up Day to show their radical solutions for the branch.

The bright-pink colour of the Start-up stands stood out in hall 9

The Start-up Day concentrated on the themes of Digital Farming, AgTech and Supply Chain Management. The start-ups in the field of Digital Farming try to optimise agrarian processes with digital solutions, in order to work efficiently and sustainably. Within AgTech, means for harvesting and pest control have been developed. Optimisation of Supply Chain Management ensures better predictions and more transparency in the supply chain.

Wilbert Hilkens of FoodInsights and Frank Pisters of VAA ICT Consultancy

FoodInsights takes care of ‘databased storytelling.’ The company builds data platforms for supply chains for fresh products and applications for transparency (tracking & tracing, carbon footprint, performance monitoring and more), planning (volume & quality) and finances (supply chain finance).

 Filipe Núrcio and Tiago Pessoa of Agri Marketplace from Italy

Agri Marketplace is a B2B cloud-based digital marketplace. The start-up built a digital trade market to buy and sell various services such as logistics, quality inspections, safe payments and legal support.

Liza Gulina of Agrimano

Agranimo developed a production management system. The platform combines sensor data, weather forecasts, satellite and drone images with machine learning-algorithms to offer site-specific recommendations and efficiency comparisons.

Simone Keijzer and Sylvester Noordam of Gearbox, the digital inspector

Gearbox creates new ‘colleagues,’ or AI-driven sorting robots that inspect the quality of vegetables. The sorting robots are specialised in tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and other vegetables.

Ormi Krikeb of AgriTask

AgriTask is an Israeli company that wants to improve productivity in production by using data and advanced technologies. Specialists are given information from member-production companies, and based on this, they can be given recommendations, an end-to-end management platform for companies in the agricultural ecosystem.
 

Agroop develops a technological solution to help growers follow the water needs of their crop and to predict risk factors such as diseases and moulds.

Ruby Boyarski, Elad Mardix and Avi Schwartzer of Clarifruit 

Clarifruit offers a cloud-based software platform (mobile and web interfaces) that can automatically identify, collect and analyse data in real-time regarding the external and internal characteristics of fruit and vegetables.
 
Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu of ColdHubs

ColdHubs is a social company that develops, installs and uses walk-in cold stores 100% dependent on solar energy for production companies and market places. ColdHubs allow small growers, shopkeepers and wholesalers to extend the shelf life of fresh fruit, vegetables and other food products by two days up to 21 days.
 
Avi Kahani and Gad Kober of FF Robotics

FF Robotics developed the Robotic Fresh Fruit Harvester with 12 robot arms that can pick between 8,000 and 10,000 apples per hour. The robot finds its way in the orchard completely automatically, and picks the ripe apples from the trees.

Angela de Manzanos Guinot of FungiAlert 

The sensors of FungiAlert ensure an early detection and fast and affordable health tests of soils and water. The SporSenZ technology samples living microorganisms that provide an image of the health of the soil and pressure from diseases.

InspiraFarms supplies a turnkey solution for production companies with energy-efficient cold storage and food processing lines that meet the global standards for food certification and can be connected to and outside of the network.
 
Janis Faltman of Logic26

Logic26 develops and supplies IoT sensors for production companies. The start-up offers a GPS-based positioning solution with various sensors to register temperature, company hours, acceleration and location for more transparency in the supply chain.
 
Jason Behrmann of Motorleaf

The primary service of Motorleaf ensures automated harvest estimates for bell peppers and tomatoes, and according to its developers, it’s the first and only established technology in the world to automate harvest estimates with profit predictions that are twice as accurate as manual estimates.

Bram Tijmons of PATS
 
PATS develops micro-drones, autonomous pest control solutions for greenhouse horticulture. “With our solution, flying pathogens of insects (moths, for instance) are both controlled and eliminated, so that further spreading of the pathogen can be prevented.”
 
 
Poolynk developed a digital solution to manage various racks. Using the poolynk platform, a mid-sized cargo company can save up to €100,000 per year.

Michaedl Vukcevic and Jon Lowy of Ripetime
 
Ripetime measures ethylene and superficial organic connection levels in real-time, 24-7, in cold stores. Using RipeTime, meaningful decisions can be made regarding the quality of fruit to ensure the products arrive on the market in optimal condition.
 
Ahmed Abbas of SunCity

SunCity develops, builds and trades mobile solar pumps to help small growers switch from conventional, polluting and expensive diesel pumps. The mobile solar pump can be operated completely free and has no emissions.
 
Adriano Desideri of Solho works with Van der Hoeven, among other companies.