Agtech and robotics company Muddy Machines, that’s helping to automate crop harvesting, has announced a new round of seed funding worth £1.5 million.
The company’s technology allows farmers to precision harvest crops like asparagus. Its Sprout robot can drive through fields harvesting accurately for up to 16 hours a day with no need for breaks and no decline in performance.
The new round of funding will be used to strengthen the company’s engineering team and build capacity to cope with more widespread adoption of its technology. Specifically, the areas that the company will focus on are:
- building a small fleet of Sprout robots for the 2023 asparagus harvest season and generating initial revenues;
- continuing with the development of different crop harvesting capabilities; and
- planning production of the next-generation of lightweight, battery-powered Sprout robots.
The latest round of funding was led by Regenerate Ventures, which specialises in investing in technologies that help farmers produce food with less impact on the environment.
“We were impressed by Muddy Machine’s vision and the speed of technical development,” the managing director at at Regenerate Ventures, Paul Rous, said. “This is a company founded in the midst of the first lockdown. Within two years it had a robot asparagus harvester built and commercially tested.”
The CEO and co-founder at Muddy Machines, Florian Richter, said raising money for agtech and hardware businesses is a challenge at the best of times.
“We’re extremely proud to have secured this funding in the current investment climate, and we’re now focused on creating a meaningful amount of harvest capacity for our customers.”
The technology is a possible solution to the current shortage of agricultural workers that’s creating a crisis for many farmers.
“The situation is desperate,” John Chinn of Cobrey Farms, the UK’s largest growers of asparagus, said. “It’s not about cutting costs of labour, but our inability to find it. We’ve a 12-week season and this technology is vital if we’re to harvest the crop.”
Muddy Machines developed its Sprout robot through trials this year on Mr Chinn’s land.
“The Sprout machine is very impressive,” he added. “It takes itself up and down the rows of asparagus and harvests the spears, putting them in a tray without causing any damage.”
