AgriTech Bridge
Cohort 2023
We’re delighted to introduce the established businesses and startups who will be taking part in the AgriTech Bridge programme.
Established Businesses

Branston
With sites in Lincoln, Scotland and South West, we work with some of the country’s most progressive growers to make sure we bring our customers Britain’s best potato crop. We buy around 400,000 tonnes of potatoes a year, as well as growing some of our own.

Burgess Farms
Burgess Farms are a British Family Farming business, family owned, growing and producing fresh produce for over 125 years. Supplying a range of retail customers for over 40 years. Working with our farming communities, we believe that our relentless commitment to great environmental growing practices are key to delivering the very best quality tasting food for consumers , now and in the future. Passionate about delivering for our customers, growers, colleagues and family, our beliefs are focused upon building a ‘future sustainable’ fresh produce business, underpinned by our core values, to be a force for good for our next generation, and beyond.

Elsoms Seeds Ltd.
Elsoms Seeds is the UK's leading independent seed specialist and plant breeder. We breed, supply and treat high quality vegetable and agricultural seed throughout the UK, EU and North America, using the latest in plant breeding research and seed technology. We are passionate about contributing to feeding the world and improving the environment.

Fane Valley
Based in Moira, Northern Ireland, Fane Valley Co-operative Society is a progressive agricultural and food processing business with interests in animal feed manufacturing, agricultural supplies, livestock identification and the provision of agronomy & forage services, porridge oats & breakfast cereals, the production of beef drippings, the processing of edible offal’s and fully integrated duck processing and production, operating across multiple locations in both the UK and Ireland.

FreshLinc
Lincolnshire Field Products (LFP) farms land surrounding Spalding as far as Boston, Wisbech and Sleaford.
The Company benefits from the land quality in this area which is predominantly Grade 1 silt. This quality of soil offers high value cropping opportunities with flexibility of working and continuity of quality. Consequently, LFP are one of the largest independent growers of brassicas, potatoes and sugar beet in the UK. In 1997 Robin Hancox, Aubrey Day and Martin Tate successfully completed a buy-out of an existing family-owned farming business and all three continue to be heavily involved in the day to day running of the company and have overseen considerable expansion during their tenure. Today the FreshLinc Group continues with multi-divisional work, all operating within the just-in-time supply chain, whether it be chill, ambient, horticulture, building supplies and other 3PL services.

G's Group
G’s is one of Europe’s leading family-owned, fully integrated fresh produce companies growing c.20,000 hectares of crops with total revenues of c.£600m per annum. G’s supply quality salads, vegetables and added value produce to major UK, European and North American retailers.

KWS
KWS is a traditional German plant breeding and seed-specialist company, present in 70 countries worldwide. For more than 160 years, KWS has been breeding and marketing high-performance varieties for the modern farmer. Investing heavily in research and development, KWS is the market leader in sugar beet seeds, also managing the propagation and distribution of corn, cereals and vegetables.
In the UK, the company breeds winter and spring wheat, and winter barley. It also oversees oilseed rape, maize and sugar beet development.

Lincolnshire Field Products
Lincolnshire Field Products (LFP) farms land surrounding Spalding as far as Boston, Wisbech and Sleaford.
The Company benefits from the land quality in this area which is predominantly Grade 1 silt. This quality of soil offers high value cropping opportunities with flexibility of working and continuity of quality. Consequently, LFP are one of the largest independent growers of brassicas, potatoes and sugar beet in the UK. In 1997 Robin Hancox, Aubrey Day and Martin Tate successfully completed a buy-out of an existing family-owned farming business and all three continue to be heavily involved in the day to day running of the company and have overseen considerable expansion during their tenure.

Stourgarden
Situated alongside the beautiful Stour Valley on the Essex Suffolk border, the Rix family have been growing onions for three generations since 1968. Stourgarden Ltd was born in 1995 as a vehicle to store, grade and pack our onions to supply direct into retail customers. Tesco was our first ever customer when we started with volumes of 45ton a week. At our site on Lodge Farm, we have a purpose built, state of the art packhouse and onion processing factory, with the most up to date technology and machinery in place. Today we handle well more than one million individual packs of onions every week. This amounts to over 95,000 tonnes of onions a year, with the majority grown in Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Kent and selected overseas partners to compliment the UK season when required. Our most modern onion grader being capable of size grading into various grades, allow us flexibility to meet the ever-changing consumer need of the UK market.

William Jackson Food Limited
William Jackson Food Group is a sixth-generation family business made up of four food businesses – Abel & Cole, Belazu, Jacksons and Wellocks. Established in 1851, we are values-led and take a long-term view. We look after our people, our businesses and the planet properly, and strongly believe in winning, but in the right way.
Startups

Ag-Drive
Ag-drive is an all-in-one app, and paperless solution for agricultural contractors. Ag-drive streamlines the whole process of recording the job from the operator, through to sending the invoice to the customer, integrating with accounting software such as Xero, Sage and Quickbooks. Say goodbye to paperwork and embrace a paperless solution that saves you time and money, whilst improving your cash flow and job records. Ag-drive gives users clear and precise instructions from field mapping to pre-start health and safety checks, timesheets, and invoicing to give the contractor, farmer and operator peace of mind, with instant data access at any time.

Agrecalc
Agrecalc is the market-leading farm carbon calculator, the carbon and efficiency tool that gives you clarity and confidence to reduce all emissions on farm. Our practical, on-farm data audit and reporting allows for a quick glance of emissions by farm activity, where you can see the performance of each enterprise on your farm as well as by the whole farm, group of farms and with benchmarking across our databse of over 6,000 unique farms and 20,000 farm reports completed to date. Agrecalc is a software solution that makes farm greenhouse gas (‘GHG’) emissions visible, helping actors across the food supply chain take confident and cost-effective steps towards a net-zero future. By benchmarking and monitoring farm GHG emissions, we are supporting agriculture’s transition to a low-carbon future. Our aim is to foster global agricultural sustainability by decreasing carbon footprint and increasing production efficiency.

Agreed Earth
Agreed Earth is on a mission to help farmers lose and use less Nitrogen fertiliser - and get financially rewarded for doing so. By focusing on tracking and verifying Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) via satellite data, Agreed helps farmers identify areas of N loss in their fields and ways that they can get similar yield for less N. They then connect farmers into ways that they can earn more from entities that also benefit from their NUE improvement - food companies, water companies, banks and developers whose supply chain footprints are positively affected by the farmer’s lower impact on climate and environment.

Agtelligence
Agtelligence is a climate-tech firm that utilises Earth Observation data to support corporations in making profound strides towards environmental stewardship. Recognising the indispensable role of the private sector in advocating for sustainable development and combating climate change, the company is dedicated to aiding businesses eager to enhance their environmental performance and transparency.

Biotica Chemicals
Biotica Chemicals is developing a new generation of environmentally friendly chemicals from sustainable natural resources as an alternative to fossil-based harmful chemicals. We are developing novel plant-based biodegradable polymer formulations and using it to produce controlled-release inorganic fertilisers and long-lasting Organic fertilisers.

Cambridge Animal Technologies Ltd (Smartbell)
Smartbell is an innovative hardware-backed Saas solution for animal health management tackling profitability and sustainability in the agro-food sector, providing livestock enterprises key insights to optimise health, wellbeing and growth. The system uses AI-based technolgies to provide anomaly detection to farms, with early detection leading to improved growth rates, 14% reduction in carbon emissions of production and 30% reduction in anti-microbial usage.

Cyclopic
Cyclopic is an innovative Scale-Up that were voted one of the leading Net Zero companies in the AIRBUS 'Why Stop at Zero' competition after being awarded an Innovate UK Smart Grant to develop their electric drive-system. The groundbreaking platform provides a totally scalable platform that introduces a breakthrough for efficient manufacture for Net Zero transport incorporating patented technology this innovation will lead the way in AI and robotic applications.
The drive-system creates unique benefits:- incorporating drive, braking ,steering, suspension all in one unit. This provides electric height adjustment providing ground and kerbside delivery. This will enhance benefits for induction charging, aid electric delivery and provide mobility for all. The patented technology also offers parallel parking. This creates a vehicle that is uniquely manoeuvrable & provides vehicle levelling capabilities. The Electric Platform has numerous applications including autonomous platform for AI benefits that will include an agri vehicle that will negotiate greenhouses autonomously. Cyclopic are also developing a fly/drive drone which can be used for agri applications & an E-Bike. Cyclopic has gained excellent traction and have strong connections to Catapult, Department of International Trade, Innovate UK Edge & exhibited in the US, Portugal & Israel last year.

Diometer
With the Diometer Flexifarm™ platform we help arable and horticultural growers significantly increase operational productivity, move to net-zero, increase biodiversity, and help make their businesses more sustainable. Flexifarm™ is a cloud-based Open Digital Integration platform for all farm data and systems, sold as a modularised SaaS proposition. This new digital ecosystem for farms addresses the critical need for a single 'one-stop-shop' for data integration to enable data-led informed decision making in the 21st century.
We have a live pilot on the 10,000acre Euston Estate in Suffolk, and lead the Open Digital Farm (ODF) initiative for arable and horticultural farms, where we are aiming to create a new farm-focused Open standard in digital farming. The ODF ecosystem with Flexifarm™ at its core integrates at the data level with current and future software, machinery, robots, sensors, and data providers, delivering a Win-Win for all.

FarmSmarter
The FarmSmarter app is an agri-tech decision making service aimed at smallholder farmers in developing regions. The prototype FarmSmarter app is being field-tested by over 100 farmers in four states of Nigeria. Close collaboration with national farmers associations, gives a projected farmer engagement program targeting 750,000 farmers in our commercialisation phase.

Fotenix
We are an ability provider, enabling the next generation of farms to operate sustainably, through embedded sensors and analytics. We exist to enable the art of agriculture through shared intelligence, with a vision to bring farming into the digital age, to provide food for the future. Our artificial intelligence workflows detect plant status, such as disease to target treatment, to increase farm performance and reduce excess damage to the environment.

FutureFarm
FutureFarm began development of its agricultural inputs and fresh product trading platform in 2019. Our mission is to take the trading of agricultural commodities digital. Our first proof-of-concept Farmdeals launched in the UK home market in 2021. Farmdeals has rapidly grown into a 2,500 member strong, top-three UK farm buying group. It is managed by <5 employees, running at a fraction of the cost of non-digital competitors. We have proven strong demand for our platform and are now exporting this model abroad, working with partners seeking to disrupt local markets. Our next, imminent point of focus is on the other side of the farmgate: we are extending the platform with a fresh produce trade marketplace. Buyers and sellers meet, negotiate and close deals through the platform, creating a frictionless journey for produce to move through the value chain. A closed beta MVP will be ready in 2024.

HAI TECH
We develop technology that consistently enables indoor farmers to produce high-quality crops through non-invasive plant root monitoring. Using AI & Root monitoring technology, we provide data-driven insights and recommendations for crop management. Enhancing the profitability of Vertical and Indoor Farming production by increasing the yield of healthy crops. We are passionate about helping reduce food waste and the carbon impact, reduce food costs for consumers, help expand current setups and create more jobs in the sector.

Herd Advance
Herd Advance provides low carbon, hybrid digital solutions to livestock farmers transforming red meat supply, quality and commercial performance while leading on animal welfare. Our precision monitoring hardware and data driven software brings you real-time analytics and insights on your herd supporting your business decision-making and breeding programmes.

Ian Cleasby Agricultural and Industrial
Ian Cleasby is a 3D draughtsman by trade, and after gaining a Diploma in Design and Innovation he has gained over 23 years experience in designing and detailing anything from rugby stadiums to innovative solar panels. With a lifetime background in agriculture he has a passion for finding innovative solutions to agricultural problems, focusing on the simple and logical approach from a ground up fresh start approach. Based in the North of England Ian owns and runs a small company making and selling “Scrapenser”, a sawdust dispensing machine which is being well received by farmers nationally and he hopes to expand the range of machines gradually by listening to farmers' needs. He has a list of other innovations he wants to develop and with the dealer network he is building up for his existing machinery line up, he is well positioned to have success in the future with more innovations.

Kolayam
Kolayam is a new two-sided B2B ecommerce international trade platform (like alibaba.com) that offers template digital B2B e-stores in the UK portal to three African international trading sectors of: FMCG exports , Agricultural exports and UK Diaspora Ethnic retailing. For the purposes of providing low-cost market access to African exports and promoting traditional African FMCG brands within the UK African diaspora ethnic retailing sector and the wider UK retailing sector.

Koolmill Systems
Koolmill has pioneered a paradigm shift in rice processing. A simpler, gentle, ultra-low power, off-grid technology, moving rice production towards a data driven digital future. Koolmill produces more food from existing harvests and contributes to 16 SDG’s, NET-Zero, Food Security, and the Circular Economy to deliver positive economic, social, and environmental impact.
Uniquely, our extensive digital capabilities underpin our novel Machinery as a Service Business Model making Koolmill technology affordable and accessible; empowering all processors regardless of size, gender, or location, to compete equally on price and quality.

Kweevo
Kweevo is an AI-Powered Supply Chain & Carbon Intelligence Platform designed for Manufacturers experiencing three main challenges:
1. Supply chain disruptions, with ongoing pressure to reduce inefficiencies and costs
2. lack of digitalisation and visibility
3. Transition from linear to circular supply chains.

listt.io
listt.io was founded with a mission to serve food and agriculture businesses along their regenerative journeys with appropriate technology solutions. We started by developing a prototype soil health and biodiversity monitoring robot to start conversations. Our next challenge is to make high fidelity ground truth measurements available at scale - through an advanced analytics platform that extends beyond the cloud onto autonomous hardware in the field. We are looking for partners to join us on our journey in quantifying soil regeneration in the UK and beyond.

MKS Capital Ltd (Tap That)
Tap-That is a business solutions platform that assists companies in establishing simplified connections with their customers, employees, and suppliers.
Our unique approach involves custom-printing signs and cards, integrated with NFC chips and Smart QR codes. This user-friendly technology serves as a contact point that triggers predefined actions, such as directing users to a business review website, an online machinery checklist, or simplifying a product reorder with a fully prewritten email.
Through our bespoke platform, we not only provide an easy method of interaction, but we also introduce unique features tailored to the needs of different industries, all while capturing and analysing vital data points from these interactions.
The insights gained are invaluable, providing our clients with actionable feedback that guides more informed decision-making and enhances operational efficiency.

MVPea
MVPea’s mission is to unlock the power of peas to improve global diets and promote healthier food choices. As a spin-out company from the John Innes Centre, we aim to commercialize plant science and human health technology to create delicious, healthy, and sustainable food products. Driven by a team of passionate early career researchers from the University of East Anglia and Norwich Research Park, we bridge the gap between academia and consumers. Our innovative products are the result of extensive research and development, transforming scientific discoveries into delectable food products. Our current groundbreaking technology is MVP01, a pea variety naturally high in resistant starch that can reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes. We are in the process of developing the first product from MVP01. We are also constantly researching and identifying other varieties to bring other unique health benefits to the market such as the protein pea.

NatureBound
NatureBound is on a mission to help farmers to leverage biodiversity data. Their observability platform integrates agricultural and biodiversity data from an open ecosystem of scalable monitoring providers with the latest remote sensing and AI technology. Their ML models optimize yield, use of agrochemical inputs and biodiversity uplift, enabling a swifter more profitable transition to sustainable agriculture.

Noola Redclaw
Noola Redclaw Ltd is a UK-based aquatech company developing the technology and smart supply chain solutions to unlock the growth of the redclaw crayfish industry. A growing and ageing population worldwide, coupled with the environmental threats of climate change, is putting severe pressure on our food security. Noola Redclaw provides a solution to produce high quality, sustainable seafood proteins. Noola Redclaw was selected by the UK Global Entrepreneur Programme for its high growth potential and won over £120,000 in grants to develop the concept. The company is now in the process of getting established in Asia where it will continue to develop its market entry model.

PES Technologies
PES Technologies has developed a game changing, in-field, soil health measurement tool that provides results directly to the user’s phone or tablet in 5 minutes. Founded in 2017 by Dr Jim Bailey, the invented sensor technology was developed into a product with the assistance of an Innovate UK project. The project involved working with an established agronomy company and recognised laboratories. Our tool combines novel sensor technology with patent pending electronics and machine learning to provide multiple indicators, across biological, chemical and physical properties critical for determining soil health. Today the soil biology is not readily available, is expensive to determine and can take weeks from a laboratory but is the most important indication of the health of a soil. Our tool delivers this cost effectively, in the field, in 5 minutes.

Pastoral
Pastoral is an innovative agritech company dedicated to transforming livestock farming and promoting sustainable practices. With a mission to empower farmers globally, we provide low-cost, pragmatic software and hardware tools that enable farmers to transition to regenerative farming methods. Our solutions combine regenerative farming know-how, satellite-based monitoring, and AI-powered animal health sensors to optimize animal welfare, improve land management, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By incentivizing farmers through increased profits, we enable them to make the switch to regenerative farming and unlock new revenue streams from sustainable agricultural practices.

Petiole
Petiole, a female-led B2B agritech company, is accelerating digital transformation resilience within the sectors of agriculture, forestry, and aquaculture using artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision. The team is currently developing Petiole Pro, a unique mobile-first platform. This platform offers a range of pre-existing AI use cases suitable for these industries and holds the distinctive capability of executing user-owned AI models directly on a smartphone.

Prozymi Biolabs
Prozymi Biolabs exploits gluten degrading enzymes for production of gluten-free bread made from wheat. Our goal is to provide a technology for production of nutritious gluten-free bread with a distinctive texture, flavour, and aroma at a lower price and with minimal environmental impact. Our enzymes come from non-pathogenic microbes isolated from locally grown wheat and other cereals and they will allow us to retain the cherished familiar taste and aroma of bread without using alternative gluten-free flours or further artificial additives.

Robofruits.ai
At ROBOFRUTIS.AI, we are passionate to create technology which delivers fresh fruit production resilience and quality. ROBOFRUITS.AI CEO, Mark Suthern is an experienced leader & Managing Director with extensive banking experience focused on the agricultural sector. Amir Ghalamzan, the CTO, is an Associate Professor at the University of Lincoln with extensive experience in robotics and AI. The ROBOFRUITS.AI technology was developed at the University of Lincoln with CERES Agri-Tech funding. Based in Lincoln, the UK, it aims to revolutionise fresh fruit production worldwide.

Sensor IT
Sensor IT is an Internet of Things Technology Provider and Manufacturer that started its journey in 2019, providing solutions for SMART verticals that include Homes, Cities, Mobility, Healthcare, Agritech and Oceantec. Our products and technologies are developed in-house, from IoT Endpoints through to our cloud-based Dashboard, from electronics schematics through to final production, which we can develop and customise to meet our clients' specific requiremens and use cases. Our objective is to create a more sustainable, efficient and fairer world through the use of cutting-edge technology.

SMAPP LAB
SMAPP LAB is building an AI-powered co-pilot for farmers to grow crops sustainably for 11 billion people. The first service is insect infestation forecasting to eliminate the yield loss caused by insects.

TrackGenesis
TrackGenesis is a blockchain development and consulting firm located in Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. Our primary objective is to foster sustainable business practices by implementing state-of-the-art Blockchain Technology, which ensures transparency and trust in workflows. With a proven track record, TrackGenesis has effectively implemented blockchain solutions in diverse sectors. Our expertise lies in developing tailored blockchain applications that enhance transparency and traceability across industries such as supply chain management, food and beverage, Agri tech, and the space industry.