Kaunas, Lithuania-based Freya Cultivation Systems, an Agtech developer, announced on Monday that it has secured €500K in a seed funding round.
Venture capital funds Coinvest Capital and BSV Ventures, along with companies Sofigama and Zunami Oy, managed by private investors and business angels Paulius Vilemas and Marko Lehtovaara, participated in this seed round.
Out of the total, Coinvest Capital invested around €250K.
The company will use the funds to launch its new pilot projects to validate the Aeroframe system, allowing the company to expand its market and potentially boost sales to €3M.
The Aeroframe, Freya’s flagship product, is a plant-growing system for commercial greenhouses that doubles usable cultivation areas and helps growers triple their profits by reducing costs per plant.
According to the developers, the Aeroframe can deliver up to double the yield for various crops — such as strawberries, lettuce, herbs, and tomatoes, compared to existing systems.
“As the global demand for fresh vegetables is set to outpace the supply capacity of field agriculture, the need for greenhouse-grown vegetables is steadily rising. Currently, a quarter of the fresh vegetables available on the retail floor are produced in greenhouses. Consequently, the greenhouse sector is expanding rapidly,” says L. Bartusevicius, CEO of Freya Cultivation Systems.
“Freya will help growers achieve groundbreaking yield improvements and will cement its spot as a leading AgTech startup. Our ambition is to become a unicorn and establish a bottom-up innovation ecosystem for Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) in Lithuania. We are deeply grateful to Coinvest Capital for its leadership in the Lithuanian startup ecosystem, to BSV Ventures for their long-term support and collaboration, and to all the business angels for believing in our team’s vision,” adds L. Bartusevicius.
Freya Cultivation Systems: Focusing on greenhouse cultivation
Founded in 2018 by Gediminas Kudirka, Freya Cultivation Systems (Baltic Freya UAB) is a deep agritech startup focusing on greenhouse cultivation.
The company’s primary product is the Aeroframe, a cutting-edge aeroponic cultivation system designed to maximise yield and efficiency in controlled environment agriculture.
The Aeroframe system utilises advanced ultrasonic E-nozzles for precise and efficient irrigation, making it ideal for various crops.
Additionally, the company offers FreyaOS, a powerful operating system that provides real-time analytics and control over your cultivation processes.
Freya Cultivation Systems plans to showcase and validate the benefits of the Aeroframe system to smart farm owners and operators from Central and Western Europe, the USA, Canada, and Japan in a newly planned greenhouse.
Simultaneously, the system will undergo further development and automation, incorporating advanced seeding and harvesting technologies.
To date, Freya Cultivation Systems has completed several pilot projects using its titanium ultrasonic irrigators, which convert nutrient solutions into fine mist with optimally sized droplets.
The startup’s technology is currently being employed to cultivate tomatoes in a World Bank-funded project in Djibouti, East Africa, and is also utilized by a biotech company in South Africa.
The investor
Coinvest Capital is an early-stage venture capital fund established by the national development bank ILTE.
The fund invests EU and Republic of Lithuania public funds entrusted to it, alongside contributions from business angels and other venture capital funds, in promising startups that create value for Lithuania. The fund’s portfolio now includes 37 startups, with €35.5M invested.
“This project combines elements rarely funded by generalist investors – deep technology, hardware, and agricultural production – yet the Freya team has successfully integrated them into a highly effective solution. I am confident that our investment will serve as a catalyst, opening doors to both regional and global markets, and enabling Lithuanian agri-tech innovators to claim their rightful position in this rapidly growing and promising sector,” says Viktorija Trimbel, Director of Coinvest Capital.
BSV Ventures (formerly known as Baltic Sandbox Ventures) invests in early-stage R&D-focused individuals and teams solving complex technical challenges with large potential for commercial application.
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