Gearbox wins the Robotisation and Data-driven Horticulture Theme Award at the Horticultural Entrepreneurship Awards! The award ceremony took place at Floriade, where Gearbox received this prestigious award from Guido Landheer, Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. This is fantastic news for all Gearboxers and a huge motivation to continue supplying digital employees to the horticultural sector!
JURY REPORT
Gearbox makes horticulture smarter
Gearbox Innovations conceives, designs and manufactures smart products in the field of robotics and automation, self-learning software and vision solutions. The technologies assess and report in real time on the quality and growth development of the plants in the greenhouse, in order to optimise the cultivation and packaging process, save costs and increase product quality. Gearbox was founded five years ago in a garage and now has 30 full-time employees working on the digitisation and robotisation of horticulture. All products reinforce each other, with the ultimate goal of consistently capturing the product and crop in algorithms throughout the entire chain, from the breeder to the supermarket distribution centre, and providing important data and advice.
The jury's verdict:
Over the past five years, Westland-based Gearbox has evolved from an R&D agency for horticulture into an impressive scale-up with a portfolio of products ranging from greenhouses to sheds, all of which use interchangeable modules. This enables them to develop new products in collaboration with end users. A prime example of this is the GearRover, a harvesting assistant that indicates which flowers and fruits are ripe for harvest. Gearbox is a master of agile product development, always working with the customer to determine what adds value.
About innovation GearRover:
The GearRover is a unique innovation that can be used in particular to train new employees in the greenhouse, while they are almost immediately productive. In addition, GearRover offers the possibility to determine harvest volumes (how many harvestable products and at what stage they are) in addition to harvest assistance, even though this feature is not yet fully developed. Gearbox has a number of close partnerships with end users, ensuring that the product is well aligned with user requirements.
