Organifarms presents strawberry harvesting robot and wins GreenTech Innovation Award
Amsterdam - “This is the moment we all have been waiting for”, says Hannah Brown, co-founder and CCO at Organifarms. Only a few minutes later, the big red cloth is lifted and shows the company’s first finished product. BERRY is a strawberry harvesting robot, which has been developed for the last two years. „We are proud to show the results of two years of developing, realizing, learning and improving”, says Brown at the live reveal on June 14, 2022, in Amsterdam.
BERRY is able to scan the fruit, evaluate their ripeness and harvest based on the results. Growers can set a degree of ripeness, at which all fruit should be harvested by the robot. The fruit is placed directly into the punnets. These are also weighed by the robot and stored in up to 8 crates. “This storage system is very efficient, as the robot does not have to return to a base to empty the punnets. This saves us a lot of time in the harvesting process.”, adds Marian Bolz, co-founder and CTO at Organifarms. It now takes BERRY an average of 7 seconds to harvest a berry, including all processes like changing rows in the greenhouse and changing the battery – which needs to be done twice a day.
“We are overwhelmed by the interest in us and our product”, says Dominik Feiden, co-founder and CEO, “it shows how much automation and solutions for current challenges in agriculture are needed”. Realizing this, Organifarms wants to help create a more sustainable agriculture and make it more accessible for a growing world population.
The big horticulture trade fair hosted in Amsterdam was the perfect place to host the live reveal of BERRY. In addition to revealing and presenting the finished product, Organifarms won the Greentech Innovation Award in the concept category. “We are honored to receive the prize and happy to have convinced the jury”, says Feiden. “Occasions like these prove our mission to be valued and awarded”. The jury especially highlighted the “great pitch and valuable team members and supporters” as well as the partnerships with established companies such as Metazet Formflex and Delphy.
Growers who are interested in Berry can book a spot at a demonstration to see the robot while harvesting strawberries. The demonstrations are taking place in Germany and the Netherlands and will be hosted in autumn 2022. Registration is open on the company’s website www.organifarms.de.
About Organifarms
Organifarms GmbH develops farm robots for the automation of labor-intensive processes such as harvesting, monitoring and plant care in protected fruit and vegetable cultivation. The first product is a harvesting robot for strawberries that also handles quality control and packing of the fruit. At the heart of the innovation is intelligent software that allows the robot to achieve good results even in difficult conditions.
More information about Organifarms is available on the company's website: www.organifarms.de
Contact
Hannah Louise Brown
Bücklestraße 3
78467 Konstanz
+49 7531 71407
(1) Dominik Feiden and Hannah Brown at the award ceremony for the GreenTech Innovation Award. Photo: GreenTech
(2) Hannah Brown with the GreenTech Innovation Award. Photo: Organifarms
(3) Mario Schäfer presenting harvesting robot BERRY at GreenTech Amsterdam. Photo: Organifarms