Share
250.000 €
Settled by the promoter
Earth Rover
Shropshire, GB
instalment
annual
term
1 year
yearly interest
5%
risk rating
B-
Farmer robots that do not use chemicals or damage the soil.
Description
Earth Rover robots help vegetable and salad farmers control weeds using targetted concentrated light energy without chemicals or damaging the soil, supporting the trend towards organic no-till farming.
Earth Rover is raising 2 million euros to expand its R&D team and to commercialise its patent-pending LightWeeding robots. This innovative project is supported by ESA - the European Space Agency, as well as UKRI - the UK Research and Innovation organization. Both these institutions have assessed and provided grants for this project in excess of 750,000€. Investors including, the asset manager MERCIA, have invested around 500.000€ in the company.
The funds raised through GoParity will be used for:
- Expanding the R&D team.
- Implementing the Earth Rover pilot project on vegetable fields in Spain and the UK.
The technology seems promising and has attracted the attention of innovation institutions, grant providers, early investors, and of leading organic farmers Pollybell, the first adopters of the technology.
The Impact
Direct
- Jobs creation: with the expansion of the R&D team and of the company’s operations, Earth Rover will create 30 new jobs in the next 3 years.
- Support the adoption of clean technologies: with the LightWeeding technology, Earth Rover allows for a reduction of up to 50% in the use of chemicals in agriculture, thus reducing damage to biodiversity.
- Support sustainable food production: weeding is one of the important challenges in organic food production, the solution brought by Earth Rover ensures a cheaper and more advantageous method for weeding in organic farms. At the same time, the solution improves food production productivity, since the laser weeders from Earth Rover do not damage the soil and do not result in crop loss due to mechanical weeding.
Indirect
- Support to innovation and R&D: increasing research efforts for technology in agriculture has the potential to raise rural productivity and encourage innovation.
Impact Indicators
30
jobs created
Contribution to the Sustainable
Development Goals
Sustainable Development Goals
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Financial viability
The loan will be used as an advance of funds to be received by ESA, the European Space Agency, and UKRI Innovate which are to be pledged as a guarantee to this loan. Additional funds are to be raised through equity.
Download Key Investment Information Sheet
The Promoter
About EARTH ROVER LIMITED
Earth Rover Limited was founded in 2017 with the objective of developing technology to produce fresh and chemical-free agricultural products and make them available to all farmers.
The company now produces robots that automate scouting, harvesting, and weed-killing processes by using AI and advanced data collection technologies. These features will help decrease reliance on chemicals, improve production efficiency, and reduce waste. Earth Rover was born in the United Kingdom but plans to expand to other parts of Europe in the short term to make this more sustainable production technology “a norm among farmers”.
Meet the team:
James Brown, Co-founder, farmer non-executive Chairman
Luke Robinson, Co-founder, CSO non-executive
David Whitewood, CEO
Ricard Pardell, CTO
James Barlow, CFO
Business Model
Earth Rover will operate weeding as a service for high-value vegetable and salad crop farmers, charged on a per hectare basis at comparable prices to existing tractor-based weeding, and at a significantly lower cost to manual weeding (where the typical cost is in of about 1000€ per hectare).
Initial target customers are salad and green vegetable crop growers such as lettuce and broccoli in Europe and the UK. Followed by the USA.
Active since
2017
Fiscal country
GB
Operating In
Industry
invest.industries.agriculture_and_technology
Number of Goparity Loans
1
Women Shareholders
No
Website
https://www.earthrover.farm/Updates
2023-08-07
First payment
First instalment was paid to all the investors
2023-08-07
Project End
This project has successfully reached its payments plan maturity. All investors have received their full capital invested and interest. Nevertheless, its impact will keep growing for many more years!
2022-12-14
Loan restructuring
This loan has been restructured as following: a 6 months extension to the project term.
2022-12-14
First payment
First instalment was paid to all the investors
2022-12-14
Partial settlement
The project promoter has settled 20% of the outstanding principal to investors, amounting to 50.000€.
2021-12-07
100% funded
1158 investors successfully raised 250.000€
2021-11-21
New target
After raising 125.000 € in three days, the promoter decided to increase the global investment amount of its campaign to 250.000€ instead of launching an additional campaign. All the other offer conditions remain the same.
2021-11-17
Open for investment
This campaign is open for investment
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