August 6, 2019

By Lynda Kiernan

Greenhouse, or indoor agricultural production, is a promising category for ag production and investing. However, it is not without its challenges, with labor costs accounting for as much as 50 percent of total production costs, driven by the dual factors of an increasing labor shortage, and a lack of skilled labor. 

“Confronted with a shrinking and more expensive labor force, production agriculture (including row crops, permanent and specialty crops, and indoor agriculture) is seeking out and adopting the use of robotics to address not only a shortage in qualified labor, but to improve the timeliness and effectiveness of decision-making…,” said Philippe de Lapérouse and Mark Zavodnyik, HighQuest Consulting, in, Robotics in the Field – 25 Companies to Watch published by GAI News last month. 

Addressing these issues is Israel-based MetoMotion, a portfolio company of the Trendlines Group, that has announced the completion of a $1.5 million investment round led by an unnamed, leading greenhouse company based in the Netherlands. This round brings the startup’s total funding to-date to $2.5 million, Adi Nir, CEO, MetoMotion told Calcalist. 

“We are very excited to have a strategic investor aboard,” said Nir. “Our Netherlands-based investor’s combined resources and rich knowledge of the greenhouse industry will provide us with an outstanding opportunity to develop our system with the right fit for the market.”

With this funding, Nir added, “We can bring our first product to the market and offer farmers a valuable solution to one of the most urgent issues they face in vegetable production today.”

Founded in 2016, MetoMotion has developed GRoW, a multi-purpose robotic platform designed to assume the labor-intensive tasks associated with greenhouse vegetable production. With an initial focus on tomatoes, MetoMotion employs advanced 3D vision technology, AI, and machine vision algorithms to identify and locate ripe fruit, and then, using multiple custom-designed robotic arms and an end-effector, GRoW can harvest fruit without damaging the crop.

The autonomous vehicle, which also has an onboard boxing system, can be seamlessly integrated with existing greenhouse infrastructure, and with the company’s capabilities, can be adapted to other labor-intensive greenhouse production tasks including pruning, pollination, de-leafing, and data collection for analysis.

“The global market for ag robotics, estimated by industry analysts to be approximately $3 billion, is expected to increase to $12 to 13 billion over the next seven years,” noted de Lapérouse and Zavodnyik of HighQuest Consulting. “…new technologies adopted from adjacent industries such as robots integrated with artificial intelligence promise to accelerate the pace of change, and revolutionize how food and crops are produced in ways we have yet to fully appreciate.”

As it looks toward commercialization, this strategic tie-in with a greenhouse-industry leader will give MetoMotion the ability to bring its first product to market armed with insight on the best approach.

“We are very pleased to take part in MetoMotion’s development as we believe that MetoMotion has the ability to bring the first autonomous tomato picking robot to the market,” said the investor in a recent release. “This development will radically change current greenhouse practices and will provide many benefits for growers to grow their businesses further.”

– Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.