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Gaia Project Australia: Breakthrough crop cultivation blueprint for greenhouses and vertical farms - seeking $2 million investment

Opportunity for

  • Investors and commercial partners interested in supporting a leafy green Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) start-up with industry leading IP to commercialise.
  • Farmers/growers interested in moving into the CEA field.
  • Existing greenhouse/vertical farmers looking for more profitable solutions.
    ^This opportunity is only for professional and sophisticated investors.

Opportunity description

Industry challenge:

Traditional leafy green agriculture is a US$200 billion dollar sector worldwide and represents 30% of fresh produce grown - but is impacted by climate uncertainty and rising input costs that threaten crop predictability and profitability.

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) addresses many of these issues, protects crops from unpredictable weather and pests, and reduces expensive finite inputs. With a global value of US$44 billion and a CAGR of 14.5%, CEA is set to increase its share in the market. But the sector also faces critical problems that impact profitability, inhibit grower adoption and threaten to slow its success. These include:

  • Low density crops - result in inefficient use of finite inputs.
  • Initial capital investment – costly & prolongs ROI.
  • Inefficient cultivation methods threaten profitability.
  • High labour requirements – increase pathogen spread and is the second highest cost.
  • Non-transparency of CEA profitability cause distrust in the sector.

Gaia Project Australia’s (GPA) IP unlocks the true potential of CEA leafy greens, doubling crop yield densities, which halves expensive inputs requirements (labour & electricity), while reducing pathogen spread, and ROI (less than 2 years).

Current opportunity:

GPA is seeking an A$2 million seed round to expand their Melbourne-based business operations, engineering and commercial manufacturing to service multiple domestic and international large market opportunities.

Previous investment allowed for the development and testing of both Space and Earth Intelligent Crop Cultivation Modules (ICCM) in a dedicated CEA showroom located in Docklands, Melbourne.

Initial interactions with farmers within the sector and investors have resulted in demand for our solution at a commercial scale.

This interest is due to GPA’s unique IP:

  • Utilizes bi-directional modular gully system, offering 50 mature plants per square meter (doubling the yield of traditional greenhouse crops).
  • 50% reduction in labour and 80% reduction in fully automated solution.
  • 50% reduction in electricity for CEA farms that utilize supplementary lighting.
  • Reduced potential pathogen spread due to no transplanting needed during main cultivation stage.

This results in full grown leafy greens that are price competitive with field-grown produce.

To find out more about this opportunity or get in touch, submit an enquiry via the "Enquire now" button above.

Opportunity background:

Gaia Project Australia (GPA) is “changing the way we grow from the ground up” using a breakthrough crop cultivation blueprint to unlock the capabilities in greenhouses and vertical farms to double the output yield while reducing energy needs.

Since 2019, GPA has developed a novel NFT modular channel system that adapts to the growth cycle of leafy greens, doubling yields from traditional greenhouse crop systems. Additionally, the IP reduces transplanting, labour, and the need for expensive robotics to obtain these yield densities.

GPA has invested significant resources in the research and development of this technology, including trials in the majority of the leafy green produce, herbs. For the last 2 years GPA was involved with multiple engineering and food science organisations in developing off-planet solutions for space.

NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge awarded GPA the International Innovation Prize in 2021 for the company’s low input to high output ratio solution. Since then, GPA has developed the first scalable system for long-duration flights and future off-planet habitats - named in the top 3 international technology solutions in 2022, and now advancing to Phase 3 development for 2023-2024.

Potential other applications:

Apart from space applications, other applications include:

  • A retrofit solution, to move existing greenhouse, container and/or vertical farms to be profitable again, is a pathway GPA is planning to further explore when moving into the international market in 2024.

  • Residential solutions: GPA’s NASA solution can be easily adoptable to a family home with a vertical farm a size of a refrigerator which can supply the entire family their daily leafy green requirements.


    ^Professional and sophisticated investors as defined in the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). The content of this opportunity is intended for use by persons having professional experience in matters relating to investments and must not be acted or relied upon by any other person including, without limitation, retail clients.

Opportunity type

Seeking investment, Field trial, Seeking partners

Readiness

Mid to Late (TRL 5-9)
For opportunities that are seeking solutions providers who are in the mid to late stages of readiness.
What does this mean?
Describes the stage of the challenge or opportunity being pursued.

Opportunity led by

Multiple industries
Cross industry Fruits Vegetables
evokeAG. Alumni

Gaia Project Australia Pty Ltd

Gaia project Australia (GPA) was founded in 2017, with initial horizon scanning in the renewable energy sector in Southern Asia. In 2019 GPA designed a Nutrient Flow Technique modular solution that was applicable to leafy greens grown in the controlled environment agriculture.
  • Location

    Victoria, Australia

  • Organisation type

    Startup or Scaleup or SME

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