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10 Aug 2023

Harvesting robot company receives £1.5m investment

Elbow Beach Capital has made a £1.5m investment into Fieldwork Robotics, a Cambridge-based company developing harvesting robots.

Over £60m worth of crops are due to be wasted by UK farms this year due to labour shortages - Fieldwork Robotics

An ongoing Seedrs round which opened to new investors today (August 10, 2023) is expected to raise an additional £600,000.

Initially focusing on soft fruits, including raspberries, Fieldwork Robotics has developed advanced, AI-supported harvesting robots to help solve seasonal worker shortages, increase farm efficiency and reduce food wastage. Raspberry producers are said to face several issues including labour shortages and declining net margins. Picking raspberries alone accounts for over 50 per cent of total production costs.

Fieldwork developed its first autonomous raspberry harvesting robot in collaboration with Bosch. Named Alpha, the robot, analyses the crop, decides when to harvest the raspberries, and places them in punnets for delivery to supermarkets.

Working in collaboration with the Summer Berry Company, Fieldwork has deployed Alpha to farms in Portugal, and the fruit it harvests is currently being sold in UK supermarkets.

Prior to this round, Fieldwork received over £700,000 in backing from Innovate UK and support from EIT Food.

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