TechBrew Robotics, a startup addressing the labor-intensive challenges of the mushroom industry, announces a significant milestone in its journey: The company is rebranding as 4AG Robotics (pronounced “Forage”) and has secured $17.5 million in equity financing.
The transformative financing round is led by BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund and InBC Investment Corp. (InBC), with participation from Emmertech, Jim Richardson Family Office, Lex Capital, and a series of angel investors from across Canada. The fresh capital infusion is aimed at accelerating the development and deployment of the firm’s cutting-edge solutions for mushroom harvesting.
4AG Robotics stands at the forefront of addressing the most critical challenge in the mushroom industry – the intensive labor required to harvest mushrooms. Mushrooms thrive in dark and humid environments, astonishingly doubling in size every 24 hours. Their delicate nature, even more fragile than tomatoes, poses a formidable challenge for automation when it comes to tasks such as picking, trimming, and packing. The mushroom sector, managed by innovative farmers, is in urgent need of automated solutions given the complex logistical and labor challenges posed by a highly perishable product. 4AG Robotics is dedicated to providing this much-needed transformative solution, and has secured purchase orders with farms in Canada & Europe.
“We believe that we can build a globally successful robotics company, based right here in Salmon Arm, and are eager to start growing our team,” said Sean O'Connor, CEO of 4AG Robotics. “We’re excited about the quality of this investment group and the people we can lean on in these critical years ahead. We have the deep experience in agtech from BDC Capital & Emmertech, along with the fresh approach and new energy coming in from InBC’s new fund.”
Leah Nguyen, Chief Investment Officer of InBC expressed enthusiasm for the firm’s investment in 4AG. “We have seen 4AG’s ability to address the challenges in our mushroom industry and believe in their potential to lead positive transformation of the agriculture sector—a sector that drives considerable value to the B.C. economy,” Nguyen said. “Their innovation is enabling mushroom farmers to optimize harvest sustainably, providing significant improvement to farm economics and farm yield, and allowing them to supplement the traditional labor-intensive process.”
As 4AG Robotics embarks on this exciting new phase with a redefined identity, the company remains dedicated to pioneering automation in agriculture. “We believe that in the years to come, 4AG Robotics can help indoor agriculture thrive across a variety of crops, and reduce the amount of produce we ship around the world on a daily basis,” O’Connor explained. “However, our core focus right now is helping mushroom farms around the world increase their profitability and harness our robots to reduce the environmental impact of farming.”
Watch this video to see 4AG robots in action.
Article topics
Email Sign Up
Related Agriculture News
