Netherlands and Australia-based Moovement, an ag-tech GPS cattle tracking company, has raised €1.1M in a fresh round of funding from Future Food Fund – which invests in agricultural and food technologies, to broaden customer offering and accelerate growth.
Never lose your cattle
According to a statement from Moovment, there are over 400 million head of cattle globally, concentrated primarily in remote rural regions of Australia, sub-Saharan Africa, and North & South America on extensive pastoral properties.
Pastoral farming is farming aimed at producing livestock, rather than growing crops. Examples include dairy farming, raising beef cattle, and raising sheep for wool.
Farmers often have limited access to their herd due to long distances between them, and their cattle, and inaccessible terrain. Hence, farmers lack insight into the state of their herd, which hinders optimal decision-making. This is where Moovement steps in.
The company offers actionable insights and alerts the farmers about the state of their herd so that they can manage their cattle in an efficient and sustainable manner.
About Moovement
Moovement’s product offers a plug-and-play solution, consisting of GPS ear tags, a local LoRa radio network, and a mobile app. According to the company’s statement, the product was developed over 3 years of extensive field testing in partnership with over 20 pilot farms in Australia.
The company claims that its Moovement GPS ear tags are originally designed for tracking cattle over long distances but can also be applied to wildlife to monitor and track their behaviour. So far, Moovement has provided tags for several research studies to allow researchers to monitor behaviour remotely, but also for movement and recolonisation studies.
Jeroen Kimmels of Future Food Fund, says, “As a dedicated Agtech investor, we have reviewed many sensor-based solutions, but very few of them manage to satisfy the specific needs of customers. The ear tag itself is unique because it is solar charged, hence, no batteries to replace, light-weight, easy to install, and straightforward to use, and all this at an affordable price.”
Moovement started the commercial offering of its product in September 2020. It currently services a substantial number of beef producers in Australia.
The company was founded within a startup acceleration program at Rabobank in 2017. In April 2020 the founders, Pieter Vogels and Luuk Heuskes spun the company out as a new and separate entity, funded by themselves and a small group of informal investors. Moovement is based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and Brisbane, Australia with a team of 10 persons.
Funds for expansion
Moovement co-founder Pieter Vogels says that the raised capital will be used to accelerate growth in Australia and to expand in the US, Africa, and South America, following customer demand.
In addition to beef cattle, Moovement is actively involved in native wildlife preservation and sheep projects internationally.
Besides, the capital will be used to enhance the current customer platform and to accelerate customer growth. “In addition to the animal location insights that we currently offer, over the coming months we will expand our customer platform with new insights into animal behaviour,” says Luuk Heuskes, co-founder of Moovement.
About Future Food Fund
Future Food Fund is a €12M Seed capital fund, founded and funded by 30 entrepreneurs. They have backgrounds primarily in food & agriculture and technology space and wish to actively contribute to the success of the fund, not only with money but also with experience and network.
Future Food Fund is aimed at Dutch companies that want to impact the food & agricultural sector with innovative technology and/or disruptive business models.