Agritech Freya Cultivation Systems has secured a €500,000 Seed investment.

The company increases greenhouse productivity through innovation in cultivation. It was founded in 2018 by Gediminas Kudirka, PhD in agronomy. In the same year, he began growing plants in fog and became one of the world’s leading experts in this specialised cultivation method.

Freya’s flagship product, The Aeroframe, is a plant-growing system designed for commercial greenhouses. By leveraging three-dimensional growing surfaces, it doubles the usable cultivation area over the available floor area and allows growers to triple their profits by significantly reducing per-plant costs.

According to the developers, compared to existing systems, the Aeroframe can deliver up to double the yield for various crops, such as strawberries, lettuce, herbs, and tomatoes.

CEO Lukas Bartusevicius asserts that as the global demand for fresh vegetables exceeds the supply capacity of field agriculture, the need for greenhouse-grown vegetables is steadily rising: 

“Currently, a quarter of the fresh vegetables on the retail floor are produced in greenhouses. Freya will help growers achieve groundbreaking yield improvements.”

The company aims to establish a bottom-up innovation ecosystem for Lithuania’s Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). 

Freya has completed several pilot projects using its titanium ultrasonic irrigators, which convert nutrient solutions into fine mist with optimally sized droplets. 

The startup’s technology is currently being employed to cultivate tomatoes in a World Bank-funded project in Djibouti, East Africa, and is also utilised by a biotech company in South Africa. Additionally, Freya’s innovative solutions are being tested by a space agency.

“Growing plants in fog is one of the most effective and efficient methods of cultivation. While this has been known for a long time, widespread adoption has been hindered by the limitations of existing technology. I am thrilled to unlock the biological potential of plants in a fog environment using our patented cultivation technology,” says Gediminas Kudirka, PhD in Agronomy and founder of Freya.

Coinvest Capital and BSV Ventures, along with companies Sofigama and Zunami Oy, managed by private investors and business angels Paulius Vilemas and Marko Lehtovaara, participated in the round.

According to Viktorija Trimbel, Director of Coinvest Capital:

“This project combines elements rarely funded by generalist investors – deep technology, hardware, and agricultural production – yet the Freya team has successfully integrated them into a highly effective solution.”

Freya plans to showcase and validate the benefits of the Aeroframe system to smart farm owners and operators from Central and Western Europe, the USA, Canada, and Japan in a newly planned demonstrator greenhouse while the system will undergo further development and automation, incorporating advanced seeding and harvesting technologies.

Lead image: Freya Cultivation Systems. Photo: uncredited.