Periodic Reporting for period 1 - STADY (STADY: Autonomous intelligent cleaning robot for stables)
Reporting period: 2018-12-01 to 2019-04-30
1.38 billion tonnes of manure are produced every year by livestock animals in the EU. To maintain animal health, cleanliness and hygiene these waste products must be removed from the animal barn or stabling environment. Especially in animal friendly stabling this is typically a manual process performed multiple times per day. The objective of our STADY Phase 1 project was to verify the technical, financial and commercial feasibility of an intelligent cleaning robot that can undertake continuous, targeted cleaning of animal waste.
Over the past 5 months we have performed a detailed market analysis selecting the horse stabling sector as our initial target market and have chosen a Cleaning as a Service business model to commercialize our product. We have developed a technical development plan which covers 8 Work Packages delivered across a 24-month period and we have created a 5-year forecast to test and prove the financial viability of our product. The business idea remains intact and we believe that the Zauberzeug™ will be a disruptive innovation that will lead to the creation of a completely new market segment at the intersection of agricultural field robots and cleaning robots. Given the high forecast growth rates for both sectors we believe our proposition has huge potential
Commercialisation of the Zauberzeug™ product will see the company grow from 10 to 65 employees by the end of the fifth year of commercialisation (2026) with associated cumulative profits of €34 million. By facilitating enhanced animal hygiene in the horse stabling and livestock sectors at a lower cost than incumbent technologies, the Zauberzeug™ will contribute to the global drive for increased productivity and animal welfare in agricultural outputs.