Full coverage: Ag-tech

Hexafly has piloted a promising way of harnessing flies to convert waste into feed and fertiliser but, having failed to raise fresh funds, it is taking a new direction.

When a Ukrainian engineer freelancing for an Irish agtech start-up found himself under Russian fire, his business and his family faced upheaval. But Yevhen Viter has kept the show on the road.

The deal presented as a routine private equity capital raise by the Tipperary agtech company late last year was anything but. There are big names – and big plans – involved.

Irish agricultural technology companies are organising into an increasingly coherent industry and took their first deep dive into EU institutions last month. Thomas Hubert followed them in Brussels and witnessed a shift in official discourse on agri-food sustainability.

Five-year-old Iamus enlisted artificial intelligence to assist farmers in their search for efficiency and was backed by a leading family in Ireland’s chicken industry, but this has proved insufficient to bring its product to market.

The Carlow-based university spin-out harnessing bacteria to clean up polluted soils has just changed its name to Talam Biotech. Behind the scenes, the company has undergone a lot more than rebranding.

When you look at the headline reports, global investments in the food and ag-tech sector tell a very positive story but the experience for many Irish start-ups in this space reflects a very different narrative.

MicroSynbiotiX is merging with Sundew, a like-minded aquaculture technology company aiming to protect farmed fish from disease with minimal environmental impact. A Dublin-based VC is funding the enlarged business.

Sean Smith, the co-founder of Micron Agritech, talks about automating the process of parasite testing for farmers, new EU legislation, and raising €1.5m in further funding ahead of the start-up’s official launch in 2022.

Four years ago, Dr Fiona Edwards Murphy went straight from her studies to founding a connected beehive start-up, ApisProtect. Last month, she featured on Forbes’s 30 under 30 list. After launching in the US in the middle of the pandemic, her product is now launching on the European market.