A first-of-its-kind hybrid event matching some of the most exciting start-ups and small businesses in north Wales with investors looking for their next big deal, Business News Wales are joining forces with Menai Science Park, GlobalWelsh and other for Den y Dreigiau – a major Angel and Seed-funding Pitching event.

Eight companies developing forward-thinking solutions in a range of vital sectors from health to artificial intelligence to marine biology and much more will be pitching for between £300k-£1.5M to investors and investor groups from across the UK and beyond, including the Development Bank of Wales, the GlobalWelsh investment network, GS Verde Investment Network and more.

Micron Agritech are one of the pitching companies. Read on to find out more about their company and their aspirations for the event from the team at Micron!

Who are Micron Agritech and what does your business do?

The Micron Kit allows vets to rapidly test animals for parasites on-site using their mobile phones. A sample is simply collected, prepared and then analysed automatically using our app. Results are delivered in near real-time as they are analysed by our artificial intelligence algorithms much quicker than the current method of sending samples to a lab and waiting up to five days for results.

With Micron Kit farmers can use the right dose at the right time based on a rapid test helping them implement targeted treatment on farm, reducing medication overheads, increasing yields, saving time and reducing resistance to medication.

When was Micron Agritech founded and what have been your major milestones so far?

Micron Agritech was founded by Jose Lopez, Tara McElligott, Sean Smith & Daniel Izquierdo and it began as a college project. In the 3rd year of their course, there was a module aimed at generating a new product based on a global problem. In anticipation of this module, the team kept their eyes out for exciting challenges throughout the summer of 2018.

The idea for Micron Kit came as Jose talked to one of his friends, who happened to be a student vet. The vet owns a horse, and she told Jose that, although she knew how to perform the parasite test, she chose to blindly blanket dose the horse regularly because the test would take too long to run. This was despite her knowing that this was the wrong thing to do due to resistance.

She told Jose that if he could make a product that made testing more accessible, it would be revolutionary for vets and animal owners. So we took this challenge on and created Micron Kit, the test that can be done with a phone with near real-time results.

In the summer of 2020, the team began working full-time on the project. In December we closed our first investment round of €500k and in a little over a year Micron Kit has gone from a concept to a fully working product. Our ML model is built on our custom built dataset of 80,000 images and is currently processing samples in about 5 minutes, this is unprecedented. The team has grown from the four founders to a multidisciplinary team of 12 employees with expertise ranging from artificial intelligence to hardware development and from veterinary science to business development.

How much of a benefit has being a part of the M-SParc community been for you?

Being part of the M-SParc community has been a huge asset for Micron Agritech! The vast amount of resources and opportunities that M-SParc provide, such as the AgriCluster have been invaluable. By being a part of the community we have been able to connect with Welsh farmers and vets that are feeling the real pain of a slow testing process and medication resistance and offer them a solution.

The state of the art facilities in M-Sparc and our laboratory facilities within the building are already being used to generate data and research that will be crucial for the success of the company.

Where do you see Micron Agritech in five years’ time?

Three words, test, then treat. Our goal at Micron Agritech is to drive the future of animal health, enabling animal owners and vets worldwide to easily implement targeted treatment through our rapid mobile-based diagnostics technologies. Over the next five years, we will roll out additional rapid health tests for many animal species through our app. As well as intelligent AI-based trend tracking features that will help farmers and vets maximise animal productivity, bringing an era of diagnostics precision agriculture. We believe the future is rapid on-site diagnostics.

Explain what being involved in Den y Dreigiau means for you and your business?

Den y Dreigiau will be an opportunity for us to showcase our exciting product opportunity and pitch at M-SParc to investors and investor groups from across the UK and beyond, including the Development Bank of Wales,  Angels Invest Wales, the GlobalWelsh investment network, GS Verde Investment Network, Severn Seed and more. We hope to increase our network and hopefully meet some people that are interested in the same tech/diagnostics space that we are interested in. Securing support at Den y Dreigiau will aid in the commercialisation of our technology as we bring rapid diagnostics to the world.

Where can we learn more about your business?

We are currently running early betas of our technology, Welsh farmers and vets can sign up to be some of the first people in the world to use Micron Kit through our website on www.micronagritech.com