QualySense: Guarantee food safety by robot inspection
As an innovative player in the field of soft commodities worldwide, QualySense developed a breakthrough technology that will change the quality paradigms of the agricultural commodities worldwide, improve excellence and reduce waste of food globally. Their product, the QSorter Explorer, is a sophisticated high speed single kernel robot which analyzes and sorts each grain individually at a lightning speed, based on physical and compositional properties. The QSorter was developed along with worldknown food industry leaders and partners such as the United States Department of Agriculture, EMPA and Agroscope. Combining Machine Vision and Near-Infrared spectroscopy, it is the result of outstanding R&D in the field of sensing, mechatronics, biochemistry, data processing and life sciences.
Founded in 2010, QualySense targets customers such as inspection agencies, traders, food processors, breeders or seed producers worldwide. The technology allows them to increase the overall quality and safety of products, minimize wastage, and develop premium and super premium products. QualySense’ strategy is to win a major customer in each market segment that they target: quality inspection, processing monitoring and research and development. It already counts leading companies in the world as their clients, such as General Mills, Pepsico and Grain Millers, which use the QSorter to automatically inspect samples of raw material during processing.New properties for new business opportunities
Even if QualySense manages to increase output to a very high degree – the QSorter can process a few tons of grains per hour – it still has to guarantee the same level of quality. The aim of QualySense now is to enable visual quality criteria to be checked off with the QSorter, as well as biochemical properties such as protein content, fungal infestation and even gluten. The contamination of cereals with gluten is a hot topic in the industry right now. In the US for example, 40 % of the population attaches importance to gluten-free products, and the trend is growing in Europe. This is strategically important for the major food producers and represents a business opportunity for QualySense. Breakfast cereal producers can use the QSorter to guarantee that its products are gluten-free, and leaders in the gluten-free industry have already tested and adopted it.
Self-sourced and investors funds to become a key player
The financial resources required to further develop the QSorter have already been sourced, partially thanks to a major development order for a food company, ”a multimillion deal“, says CEO Francesco Dell’Endice. Between 2014 and 2015, QualySense was also able to raise CHF 3.4 million in total to become a key player in its domain and expand internationally. Now the company is raising a significantly larger amount in order to grow even faster.
With a team of 28, QualySense already counts offices in Zurich and Chicago. It was part of the venture leaders program in China in 2016 to meet potential investors and partners. Until September 2016, the company was ranked in the TOP10 of the TOP100 Swiss Startups (startups older than 5 years have to leave their place to the next generation of talented startups in the ranking). QualySense is now on the way to revolutionize an entire industry. In 2017, it plans to install a pilot multiton sorting capacity device into the food development plant of an industry leader. This will enable them to produce a premium quality product as well as partner with a soft commodity trader, with the objective to upgrade the quality and increase the value of the traded goods.
