NETPark robotics company wins big contract

Wootzano Ltd, a robotics company based at the North East Technology Park (NETPark) in the UK, has recently won the biggest contract for any robotics company in the UK known to date.

Wootzano Limited is a robotics company that builds dextrous robots utilising patented electronic skin (Wootzkin™), proprietary machine learning models, vision system and electronics, to enable them to sense and feel in the real world as humans do.

The £300mil+ deal was signed prior to the release of their state-of-the-art robotic system known as Avarai™; capable of handling, pruning, estimating weight, inspecting quality, and packing delicate produce. The contract was signed with one of the largest pack-house giants in Britain in April 2021, closing one of the most significant deals in the country.

Wootzano Ltd have only been in business for three years, and had already seen rapid growth in the region during the pandemic. Only weeks earlier, they won “Digital Engineering /Technology” Made in the North East Award 2020.

Dr Atif Syed, Founder and CEO of Wootzano added: “This is an exceptional time for Wootzano and everything the team have worked on developing for the past 2 years. The technology we have developed gives immense value to our customers packaging various soft fruits and vegetable. Avarai™ is one of its kind and currently the only robotic system capable of carrying out various complex tasks to fruits such as grapes potentially giving a return on investment to our customers in about 12 months. This is exceptional and is a first in the packaging industry.”

Mark Beckwith, COO of Wootzano, said: “There have been significant challenges to solve in developing a complete robotic system from the ground up and I am proud of our engineering team with the unique solutions they have developed to support the supply of fresh produce to supermarkets more efficiently.”

They were also one of the participants at IASP Virtual in our “Eyes on the market: Company stories worldwide” session, where they shared their story of keeping business going under the pandemic and the advantages of being based at NETPark.