Food Agility congratulates our strategic partner The Yield on their announcement in May 2020 of an $11m investment led by Yamaha Motor Ventures. The Yield are currently involved in our Predicting Harvest Timing and Yield in Intensive Cropping project, which uses microclimate data and AI prediction models to aid in on-farm decision making for large-scale horticultural businesses. This project recently achieved early commercial rollout across Costa berry farms in multiple states. Securing this investment is a recognition of The Yield's efforts in delivering a world-class solution in weather and yield predictions for their customers. We look forward to continuing to work with The Yield and leading the way towards a sustainable, data-driven future for Australian agriculture.
Sydney, 12 May 2020 – Leading Australian agricultural technology company, The Yield Technology Solutions (“The Yield”), announced today that it had finalised investment of AUD $11 million, led by venture capital group, Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley (“Yamaha Motor Ventures”).
Yamaha Motor Ventures is the strategic business development and investment arm of global technology organisation, Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (“YMC”) (Tokyo: 7272).
Yamaha Motor Ventures leveraged its global domain expertise in high-value horticulture in identifying The Yield as an investment opportunity.
The Yield is developing its proprietary digital application providing microclimate data and predictive insights to support critical production decisions for large commercial growers in the specialty crops industry.
Nolan Paul, the partner responsible for leading global Food and AgTech investments at Yamaha Motor Ventures, said that “the group looks to partner with the best companies in a global market”.
“For several years, Yamaha Motor Ventures has scrutinised the global ag tech sector as the food supply chain, particularly specialty crop production, is ripe for disruption. Based on our domain analysis, we selected The Yield as a best-in-class solution in delivering predictive insights for specialty crops, making it a very attractive opportunity for the Yamaha Motor Exploratory Fund," said Mr Paul.
"The Yield is poised to be The Climate Corp of horticulture and we look forward to supporting the team’s strategic plan to scale its data-driven solution to the global specialty crop market."
In a show of confidence, the major shareholder in The Yield, the Bosch Group, converted its existing loan into equity in the company.
“It’s great to see The Yield getting traction and attracting such investment. There is no doubt, Agriculture 4.0 is coming of age, and Australia is poised to play a leading role thanks to companies like The Yield,” said Mr Gavin Smith, President of Bosch Australia.
Ros Harvey, Founder and Managing Director of The Yield said she was “delighted with the investment and the tremendous support from these well-known, global technology organisations.”
“This is recognition of our efforts in delivering a world-class solution in weather and yield predictions for our customers.”
“Technology is critical in delivering security, particularly in light of current disrupted food supply chains,” said Ms Harvey.
“Our Sensing+ microclimate solution helps customers to work largely remotely in managing the needs of their crops and manage labour requirements. It facilitates the uptake of automated robotic operations in farming and remote management of dispersed assets.
“Additionally, by leveraging customer data sets, our Sensing+ Enterprise Analytics platform quickly combines data to create AI models for things like yield predictions, that drive significant commercial benefit for customers.”
Under the subscription agreement, The Yield’s current capital raise round is open to new investors until the close date of Thursday, 16 July 2020. Investors can also wait list for the company’s next capital raise by contacting The Yield direct via their website.
The Yield is an Australian AgTech company on a mission to transform food and farming practices with scalable digital technology. The Yield uses Internet of Things (IoT), data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to power its technology to solve real challenges at farm level and throughout the food chain.
The Yield’s Sensing+ combines sensors and analytics to provide information and predictions in easy-to-use apps that help large commercial growers make important on-farm decisions like when to irrigate, feed, plant, protect and harvest.
First published on theyield.com 12 May 2020
