The Monday Interview: Pollination technology creates buzz

In two years, Cork native Fiona Edwards Murphy has gone from winning UCC’s Ignite Business of the Year award to closing a €1.5m financing round with international venture capital investors, writes Pádraig Hoare.

Pollination is a burgeoning billion dollar industry — and Cork native Fiona Edwards Murphy is at the forefront of revolutionary technology aimed at safeguarding a third of the food we eat daily.

ApisProtect, an Irish agtech innovator using the Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor honey bee colonies, last week closed a €1.5m seed round of financing led by top-tier international venture capital investors Finistere Ventures and Atlantic Bridge Capital.

Radicle Growth, the Yield Lab and Enterprise Ireland also participated in the investment round of the firm, which was co-founded by Kanturk native Dr Edwards Murphy, who is also its chief executive.

ApisProtect technology provides real-time hive monitoring, powered by satellite-enabled sensors that are retrofitted to existing beehives.

Ms Edwards Murphy’s work on the topic of hive monitoring has received acclaim across the world.

How big can the industry get?

“There are 91 million beehives in the world, so 91m sensors. Our plan is about 300,000 hives over the next five years.

Our first American office is open in Salinas in California, a real heart of the pollination industry. It’s great to be in the middle of all these growers, with all these crops, that are so dependent on the bees.

“Pollination is a billion-dollar industry, and is growing very rapidly. It’s booming in the US and is growing in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada — any country that grows a significant amount of nuts or soft fruit, things like that,” Ms Edwards Murphy said.

Like many great entrepreneurial minds, the UCC graduate spotted a gap in the market and the idea blossomed.

“My background is in electronic engineering. I did my undergrad in UCC in electronic and electrical engineering. I got involved with the Embedded Systems group, which is the research area that IoT falls under. I knew I wanted to do a PhD on wireless sensor network applications, which is basically IoT, even though it wasn’t called that back then.

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