Seed10 August 2023

Fieldwork Robotics secures £2.1m from Elbow Beach Capital and a Seedrs campaign to scale its harvesting technology.

Elbow Beach Capital provided £1.5m towards the financing alongside a Seedrs round, with participation from Frontier IP and other existing investors.

£2.1MSeed

Fieldwork Robotics develops advanced artificial intelligence and harvesting robots designed to help farms tackle labour shortages and reduce food waste. The company was spun out of the University of Plymouth and is based in Cambridge.

Fieldwork Robotics has secured £2.1m in funding, led by Elbow Beach Capital with a £1.5m commitment alongside an ongoing Seedrs round expected to raise £600k. Frontier IP, a family office and other existing backers also participated in the round. The capital will be deployed to expand the team, transition robot manufacturing to outsourced partners, and onboard additional growers onto the firm harvesting service.

The Cambridge-based business has created autonomous robots capable of picking soft fruit such as raspberries to help farmers mitigate chronic worker shortages and post-harvest crop losses. Its flagship machine, Alpha, allows agricultural operations to run continuously and has already been deployed on farms in Portugal, supplying major British supermarkets.

From the founder

"Elbow Beach Capital are a great strategic and cultural fit for us. As a genuine impact investor, it’s clear that EBC are not only looking for potential value, but also at the impact of their investments and how they can make the world a better place. This round will support our work with forward-looking farms looking to solve their labour shortages, reduce crop wastage and mitigate food inflation."

David Fulton

CEO at Fieldwork Robotics

Investor perspective

"The Fieldwork Robotics team combine their significant technical expertise with a drive to create an instant and lasting impact. Agriculture as it stands is not fit for purpose and we need innovative technologies to alleviate the unsustainable levels of waste and improve the economics for the farmer and end customers in the sector. We look forward to working closely with Fieldwork as they tackle this issue head on."

Jon Pollock

CEO, Elbow Beach Capital