The Chamber
Agricool won the FBC Business Award 2019 - Opportunity
During the Annual FBC Gala Dinner 2019, the French Business Council Business Award 2019 – Opportunity, winner, Agricool, has been rewarded for its involvement in developing urban farming. The company is a French startup revolutionizing AgTech, grows pesticide free, local and delicious fruits and vegetables in recycled containers calls “Cooltainers”, that you can find in The Sustainable City. We have interviewed the winner, Georges Beaudoin, General Manager - Agricool Middle East - Dubai, UAE
1. Why did you decide to compete for “French Business Council Business Award 2019 – Opportunity”?
When the themes of the Expo2020 were announced, we recognised similarities with our mission at Agricool. We aspire to build a better food system to ensure a more sustainable future. Our solution is to bring within cities an element of our life that is yet missing: food production. And because, in the next 30 years the world will see more than 85 % of its population living in cities, we must make this environment, once sterile, productive. Otherwise, the impact of importing our food will be with greater environmental impact and this for produces that will have loss their nutrition, taste and quality.
Agricool offers one solution to grow locally, year round, pesticide free, using no transport, using 90% less water and nutrient than conventional farming, on 30 times less space and powered by 100% renewable energy excellent fruits and vegetables. This is the innovation we want to push forward for at the Expo2020 and that we are hoping will be consider as one of the many solutions to brighten our future in smarter cities.
2. Why and how Agricool has decided to set-up in the UAE?
Since the first days of Agricool, we have received hundreds, maybe thousands, of demand around the world for our solutions. We understood then, that the technology we were developing was not only solving a problem of food import in Paris but everywhere else. We chose Dubai, as our first city for our international expansion, because like any other cities, it relies on food import. Maybe even more so in this climate that renders agriculture very difficult year round.
So in 2018, in partnership with The Sustainable City, we tested our Cooltainer in the UAE Climate to see if our technology will resist the hottest days of summer and it did perfectly. But, we also came to realise that the UAE has a foreseeing, visionary food security agenda and that are pushing for innovation like ours to emerge. This is the perfect environment for us to develop a new hub for Agricool and benefits from Dubai’s radiance in the region to show how our technology can integrate in one of the smartest city in the world.
3. Could you please let us know more about your company and your activity?
Agricool was founded at the end of 2015, and today counts more that 80 people. We take on the challenge to grow better fruits and vegetables within cities to defy the poor quality produces imported. Our start-up had to overcome a lot of challenges, but thanks to its resourceful team and incredible capacity to learn, our R&D department has created multiple patented technology that enable us to grow in recycled shipping container, that you can deploy anywhere in cities. Agricool has now many Cooltainers farms around Paris and is famous for its delicious strawberries.
4. What’s next for Agricool?
In the coming months, Agricool will be focusing, thanks to its last fundraising concluded in November 2018, its final step before we can industrialise to a larger scale our Cooltainers solutions.
