The growing shortage of harvest labour caused by Brexit and COVID-19 has created a major problem for growers, with crops going unpicked. Muddy Machines have developed an electric robot platform called Sprout to help alleviate the pressure that farmers are facing. By working closely with farmers to understand their needs an initial tool has been developed that can replicate humans in harvesting green asparagus. Each harvest worker can generate about £50k of revenue for growers, one robot can replicate five workers safeguarding £250k of revenue for a farmer The company is now looking to expand its capabilities to harvest other crops.
Chris Chavasse is the CEO and founder of Muddy Machines. He has extensive experience in developing mobile robotics for various applications, including autonomous drones for agricultural land monitoring and ground-based robots for search and rescue. Since starting Muddy Machines in 2020 Chris recognises his role has grown to encompass business strategy, technical road-mapping and delivery, team management and development, recruiting, process development, operations, and fundraising.
Chris wants to use the support from the Shott Scale up Accelerator to develop leadership skills around managing an extended team and keep that team engaged, aligned and motivated. He notes that “I am ultimately accountable for their success, growth, happiness and welfare.” To do this he would like to develop his own mentoring and feedback ability to ensure he is guiding and developing the team in the best possible way to ensure they are as successful as possible.
He also notes that, “peer-to-peer discussions will be very powerful in sharing approaches to solving both engineering and leadership challenges as our companies grow and scale (not just during the programme, but afterwards too).” He plans to make good use of the networking opportunities as part of the Shott Scale up Accelerator.
In June 2022, Muddy Machines had four employees (+2 founder); they now have 16 employees. Over the next 12 to 18 months they aim to demonstrate the commercial viability of Sprout at small scale and raise Series A funding off the back of the results. This will enable them to manufacture a larger volume of machines, scale the team, and also break into other crops and agricultural services, such as harvesting other crops, weeding, data and field analytics.
