Start Blueberry Innovators

Twelve ambitious blue berry growers from the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium have joined forces. Through their joint R&D company they want to accelerate and make innovations more suitable in the field of smart farming and robotic harvesting and weed control. Co-creation with educational and knowledge institutions and progressive companies from high-tech and manufacturing industries is essential to achieve these objectives. Blueberry Innovators represents a cultivation area of almost 300 hectares and its shareholders are active in the cultivation, production and marketing of blueberries.

Innovation as a means to realise a future-proof business model

The Netherlands is one of the top 5 European countries with the largest acreage of blueberries. The importance of process and product innovation is enormous in order to be both leading and to remain progressive. Erik van de Vin, Blueberry Innovators cluster manager: "In the coming years, we will be faced with a number of challenges in the areas of economies of scale, labour, efficiency, crop protection, sustainability, bio- and soil diversity and water and product quality. In order to respond adequately to this, mutual cooperation is crucial and innovations are necessary. Within Blueberry Innovators, the growers are actually 'at the wheel'. All our innovation activities are aimed at realising a future-proof and economically sustainable business model for participating growers.

External innovation department within the Innoveins ecosystem

The twelve participating blueberry growers have chosen to combine their joint research and development needs in their own R&D company; an external innovation department of their companies where products and services in the field of robotic harvesting, smart farming and robotic weed control are further developed and made ready for the market. The growers are legally organised in a private company. All growers are therefore shareholders of Blueberry Innovators, and a number of growers have been elected as directors of the company. Leon Schrijnwerkers, shareholder of Blueberry Innovators: "Developments in the field of robotics, big data, sensors, autonomously moving vehicles and vision are going fast. By working together with other growers and technicians within the Innoveins ecosystem, we are much better able to make these innovations actually applicable to our own cultivation and propagation companies. In addition, this way we can make our development programmes more effective and cheaper.

Co-creation as the key to success

Blueberry Innovators' first innovation activities have already started and will be further scaled up next year. Earlier this year, in cooperation with the Hogeschool van Arnhem and Nijmegen, research was started into automatic weed detection and recognition. In 2019, it is expected that a number of partnerships will be ratified, aimed at the realisation of a harvesting robot and the application of big data in the blueberry cultivation. Co-creation is central to all development programmes of Blueberry Innovators; cooperation between growers, technicians and researchers ensures that innovative products and services are not only 'doing what they have to do', but can actually be implemented in a commercially attractive way at the cultivation company. Blueberry Innovators would like to get in touch with organisations with the same ambitions.