Alnwick agricultural drone specialist secures almost £800k in innovation investments

A Northumberland based AgriTech firm has secured a six-figure investment and received innovation grant funding to transform how farmers and rural landowners manage their assets.

Alnwick based Drone Ag established its business delivering aerial crop scouting, spraying, and mapping using drones and smart data-analytics and has gone on to secure a mix of Innovation funding to expand their operation into developing a drone-based solution to soil sampling.

The company secured a North of Tyne Innovation Recovery Grant in September 2021 to part-fund the development of a prototype for a more technologically advanced drone to carry the equipment needed to extract and return soil samples.

The Grant investment of £5.5k towards the project has enabled the team to secure an additional £145k from Innovate UK as part of the Regional Angel Investment Accelerator programme, with £200k of match funding secured from angel investors after pitching at a Newcastle Angel Hub pitch event.

The investment completes a total fundraise of almost £800k by Drone Ag, which has also raised investment via crowd-funding platform, crowdcube. With product designs at the ready, this innovation project is geared up to deliver a commercially viable soil sampling solution, with launch to market planned for early 2023.

Jack Wrangham, founder of Drone Ag said “The rural economy is at the very heart of all we do. Our team live and work in rural Northumberland. We understand the issues facing our people and place and have developed our technology to ensure we can effectively take on challenges from soil quality to better land management and food security.

“Currently, the pressure is on farmers and landowners to source new energy efficient alternatives to driving miles in diesel powered tractors. They also need to be able to learn from intelligent data streams about the real-time health of their soil.

“Our work will help them to deliver these tasks with greater efficiency, saving time, money and with a smaller environmental impact. The investment we’ve received will help us to scale our project quickly, and we’re spending this year focused on bringing our commercial offer to market.”

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