Like Aliaxis, the Belgian Impact fund is taking part in raising funds for the Israeli scale-up offering connected, greener agriculture.
The Newtree Impact fund has just made its 14th investment. It has set its sights on CropX Technologies, an Israeli company that aims to make agriculture greener through the digital solutions it has developed. The Belgian impact fund injected $825,000 into the company as part of a larger investment: CropX received a total of $30 million at the end of a financing round launched last April. Another Belgian investor, the venture capital wing of Aliaxis, a leader in piping systems, had already taken part in the round back in April.
CropX Tech aims to facilitate precision farming that is profitable, efficient, sustainable, and respectful of the land. It has developed a system combining sensors in the fields measuring various data such as soil temperature, moisture content, and electrical conductivity, then using the cloud to convey this information to its software platform and its customers. As a result, farmers are kept constantly informed about the state of their soil, enabling them to take more precise action and, in particular, to better dose their chemical fertilizer and water inputs.
“This technology enables savings of up to 50% in water (irrigation) and some 20% in inputs, with a 20% gain in yield,” sums up Benoît de Bruyn, CEO of Newtree Impact, who admits to having been won over by these results.
Founded in 2013 in New Zealand, CropX Tech moved to Israel in 2017 and has grown organically and through acquisitions. It now has some 2,000 customers, with 15,000 systems installed, in 60 countries. It has a subsidiary in the Netherlands following the acquisition of Dacom Farm Intelligence in 2021. And its customer portfolio already includes several Belgians, including farmers, but also suppliers and agronomy consultants.
“Our mission is to transform agriculture through data-driven innovation,” CEO Tomer Tzach stresses in the press release. “Newtree Impact shares with CropX a common vision of a land-based culture that prioritizes sustainable practices and helps tackle the climate emergency,” says Benoît de Bruyn.
Since becoming an impact fund in 2021, Newtree has raised €12 million and made 14 investments. “Our growth is linear”, says its CEO when asked if he wouldn’t like to scale up and aim for bigger. That doesn’t stop us from participating in some exciting fund-raising opportunities,” he adds. And we often find ourselves in the same rounds as the big impact funds. The important thing is to do things right.
MICHEL LAUWERS
Published the 04th October 2023 in l’Echo
