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Yield Lab has launched an agritech accelerator programme which will support up to five businesses with a particular emphasis on addressing food security and environmental sustainability.
Yield Lab has announced a new accelerator programme which will offer €500,000 in support for agritech start-ups. It will support up to five companies with €100,000 each, €75,000 of which will be in cash with an additional €25,000-worth of services and support. It will also offer successful applicants an intensive mentoring and training programme to help turn ideas into internationally scalable businesses.
The programme is in its third year and, to date, Yield Lab has invested in eight different companies, four of which are based in Ireland. In this round, the company will support firms with a particular focus on environmental sustainability and food security.
The news comes after Yield Lab Europe announced a €21m agritech start-up fund, which is led by a €10m investment from Enterprise Ireland. This fund intends to invest in 30 companies over the next five years.
“Yield Lab Europe is going from strength to strength as we launch the third year of our accelerator programme and look to invest in companies that have exciting new innovations to address the growing problems around environmental sustainability and food security that the world faces,” said the accelerator’s managing partner Nick Deasy.
“Our formula of offering both our own equity capital, alongside mentoring and access to market and the wider venture capital industry, is in high demand from agritech start-ups across Europe, and we anticipate a lot of interest in this year’s programme,” he added.
One Irish company supported by the fund is ApisProtect, which uses sensors and monitors to track the health of honey bee colonies.
Dr Fiona Edwards Murphy, chief executive of ApisProtect, commented: “The experience of working with the Yield Lab has been extremely helpful. This investment has enabled us to roll out our technology across the world, we now have a team of 10 monitoring 10m honey bees worldwide.”
Applications for this year’s programme are open until 31 July 2019, and interested parties are advised to visit the application portal to nominate themselves for consideration.
