Customer: Berg Roses Nederland B.V. en Porta Nova Rozenkwekerijen B.V.
Although the number of companies and the number of hectares of horticulture have been significantly decreased in the Netherlands - from 310 companies owning 932 hectares of horticulture, to 265 companies having 532 hectares of land in just one year of time - the rose industry still has an impressive market share of 15%. Nevertheless, the revenue of ornamental plants itself has been increased. This may be a result of technological advances.
At the time that Stefan Persoon (Inno-Agro) held a presentation during the introduction of the minor Robotica from Delft University of Technology, it came therefore as no surprise that his request could cause a major technological leap in automating the process of picking roses. Berg Roses B.V. and Porta Nova, as reported by Stefan Persoon, are expecting to harvest over 140 million roses in 2018, worth more than 80 million euros. Therefore, they have the desire to create a rose-picking robot.
In addition, the problem in the horticulture nowadays, is that the harvesting of, for example, roses, is very labour intensive. "As a Dutch company, you can never win from a foreign country, in terms of cost price," says Stefan van Vuuren, commercial director of Porta Nova. "Energy and labour are in the Netherlands always more expensive." Also, the harvest is hard to predict. The solution of a rose-picking robot is expected to save the companies about 4% on wrong harvest, increase the harvesting speed by 9,1% and save a total of 3.73 euros per square meter per year, according to Stefan Persoon. The importance of a rose-picking robot is once more emphasized by these numbers.
In this project, it is our task to make the rose-picking robot reality. A challenge that we, a multidisciplinary team of students from Delft the University of Technology, are very eager to accept!