Urban Crop Solutions Was Awarded The Public Choice Award on The European Finals of The FoodNexus Challenge
Urban Crop Solutions Was Awarded The Public Choice Award on The European Finals of The FoodNexus Challenge
Urban Crop Solutions was awarded the Public Choice Award on the European finals of the FoodNexus Challenge on Wednesday evening December 13th. Fifteen companies from 8 different EU countries were competing during a three-day event in Wageningen (NL) for the European FoodNexus Challenge Award. The expert audience consisting of academic, corporate and venture capital people selected Urban Crop Solutions during a live closing event.
FoodNexus is a European consortium of international food companies and leading knowledge institutions that strives to create a robust and sustainable European Food System.
Fifteen finalists were selected for the European final in Wageningen (NL) out of over 470 applications from European companies. During the past three day event, a boot camp was organized for the European Finalists so that they could work together with R&D and Innovation Managers from corporate partners in facilitated workshops. The goal was to prepare all parties for collaboration projects on e.g. co-development of the startup or scale up’s technology or international marketing and sales. More than 300 people attended the closing night on Wednesday and were able to vote at the end of the event for the Public Choice Award. Representatives of the corporate partners (Unilever, Nutreco, FrieslandCampina, and Ahold), as well as other managers from international corporations, the academic community, and private equity investors, were present during this final session. Prince Constantijn of The Netherlands joined a panel on Corporate-Startup engagement during this event.
“This award is a very important international recognition for our team and for our realizations in the last year. During the past three days, we felt great support for our business model. The feedback that we received from corporate experts makes us believe even more that indoor vertical farming solutions have a great potential worldwide to optimize supply chains and plant production in many industries”, says Maarten Vandecruys, CEO of Urban Crop Solutions. Brecht Stubbe, Global Sales Director of Urban Crop Solutions adds “Our global approach and our focus on automated and robotized systems were very much liked by the European audience during the event. We should leverage this Award and increase our presence in the world even faster. The last weeks we have felt a lot of international traction for our systems”
Urban Crop Solutions develops tailor-made plant growth installations for its clients. These systems are turnkey, robotized and able to be integrated into existing production facilities or food processing units. Urban Crop Solutions also has its own range of standard growth container products. Being a total solution provider, Urban Crop Solutions can also supply seeds, substrates, and nutrients for clients that have limited or no knowledge or experience with farming. Currently, the company has developed plant growing recipes for more than 200 varieties of crops that can be grown in closed environment vertical farms. These recipes (ranging from leafy greens, vegetables, medicinal plants to flowers) are developed specifically for indoor farming applications and sometimes exclusively for clients by its team of plant scientists. Urban Crop Solutions has started activities in Miami (Florida, US) in 2016 and is soon to open a division in Japan.