The UK's £2 billion soft fruit industry is facing an existential crisis. A recent British Berry Growers survey revealed that nearly half of all growers are losing profitability, with 37% actively considering leaving the industry. A trend that threatens the future of domestic soft fruit production. In response, Neurabotics Ltd, an agri-tech SME based in Aberystwyth, is leading a powerful consortium to develop their transformative solution. In collaboration with global berry producer and growing systems manufacturer Haygrove Limited, local Mid-Wales strawberry growers Porth Farm, and the well-renowned Computer Science Department at Aberystwyth University. This project will bring together experts in both food and technology to develop and demonstrate a revolutionary high-speed semi-autonomous strawberry harvester that offers clear economic benefits to growers. Building on a successful feasibility study, this project will advance the technology to a TRL-7 working prototype. Their patented dynamic gripper mechanism, combined with advanced Sim2Real artificial intelligence, is projected to operate significantly faster and more energy-efficiently than any current robotic alternative. This increase in picking speed provides a direct economic advantage over competitors. Where, this performance advantage directly translates into an economic benefit for growers, who can meet their production needs with significantly fewer machines, thereby reducing overall capital and operational expenditure. This innovation will allow British fruit growers to regain profitability and increase sustainability in their businesses. It delivers clear environmental benefits by reducing the need for air-freighted imports, enhancing the resilience and security of the UK's food supply chain. By creating high-value technology jobs in Mid-Wales and boosting the competitiveness of the UK agri-food sector, this project will secure a more prosperous future for British farming, reinforcing the region's status as a leading agri-tech innovation cluster.

Horticulture is suffering a labour productivity crisis. A rise in farm gate prices for strawberries since 2010 of just 23% \[_Defra_\] versus minimum wage increases of 77% in the same period \[_HomeOffice_\] have squeezed growers' margins to the absolute limit. Meanwhile a lack of labour availability, with 44% of growers employing seasonal labourers reporting a shortfall \[_Defra-2021_\], has made the running of many farms at current scale impossible. There are only two possible answers to this twin labour threat of cost and availability: shrink the size of the industry dramatically, ceding the market to foreign competition, or develop and invest in the tools to massively boost labour productivity. AREA-H is squarely aimed at the latter. The UK Food Strategy recognises that autonomous machines are providing an increasingly essential role within horticulture, with the transformative potential to solve the labour crisis, increase productivity, resilience and also decrease the environmental impact of farming. However, uptake of robotics by UK farms is low compared to other industrialised nations despite the sector facing many critical challenges (including labour availability, rising costs, and climate change pressures). To enable the transition to autonomous fleets at scale, robust robot localisation and navigation is key for high confidence operations and low levels of supervision. Current tech focuses on semi-autonomous navigation systems for high-cost large-scale equipment that are not operational in the unique mixed environment of horticulture - where polytunnels/greenhouses interfere with signals (such as GPS) and where high levels of human density are present - therefore horticulture-specific solutions are needed. The project Accelerating Robotics and Embedding Autonomy in Horticulture (AREA-H) has assembled a world-class collaboration between technology leaders bringing expertise in robotic harvesting, AI and embedded controls, horticulture growing systems and state-of-the-art autonomous-operation research - necessary to realise the transformative impact of robotics to UK horticulture growers.

The global market for horticultural greenhouse films is £1.4bn per annum and is forecast to grow by 6% p.a. until at least 2020. BPI sales of horticulture greenhouse materials are in the order of £21m p.a.; this represents a global market share of 1.6%. The BPI target growth is 15% per annum for the 5 years post project, on this basis BPI will see sales growth of £37m over the year 5 period (after deducting general market growth). On this basis, the BPI global market share would increase to 2.1% by the end of the period. This is a modest market share growth expectation. Assuming a project cost of £1.4m this would represents a sales to project cost gearing ratio of 26:1. Sales are likely to be significant as the sector is now highly commoditised and the novel materials will deliver clear and substantial benefits to growers, including yield (c. +10%) and crop quality increases, as well the potential to reduce manual labour (reduced ventilation of fruit tunnels via IR reflection). Any means to reduce the reliance on manual labour will be a significant benefit to growers. A significant benefit of driving yield and quality via greenhouse films is that the environmental impacts are almost entirely passive; in fact increasing yield per unit area can reduce environmental impacts as fewer chemicals are required per unit area, and a lower tonnage of film per unit of production. There will also be highly significant benefits to Schulmans in terms of master batch sales. Haygrove Tunnels will benefit in terms of the added value from film and novel tunnel sales. As well as production benefits, Berry Gardens and Finlay’s will benefit from having a 3 year lead on the development of novel technology which could underpin greenhouse productions systems for a considerable time in the future. There may be significant opportunities to extend patent developments into other industrial sectors, there is considerable interest in IR reflective materials for building heat control (reducing air conditioning loads).