Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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Spotta knows 'pest'
Spotta Smart Pest Systems has capped a strong first year of commercial operations with accelerated product development and market reach for 2021.
To support its growth into new territories and pests, the company has doubled its headcount and secured partnerships to further extend its commercial reach.
Having secured $1.18 million in seed funding in July 2020, Spotta's ambition to revolutionise the pest control market - providing monitoring technology to help prevent wide-reaching infestations - has continued to evolve.
Designed for hospitality, the Bed Pod monitoring system for bed bugs was the pillar of 2020. Following the successful first year of Bed Pod in the UK hospitality sector, the company adapted its sales strategy to work directly with pest controllers in the UK, Europe and North America as the Covid pandemic hit. The Bed Pod is also set to be installed in its first community housing association in 2021.
Spotta's Service Provider partnerships assist pest management professionals in providing effective monitoring as part of their client services. In December 2020, a partnership with BadBug was announced, extending Spotta's representation in key European markets including France, Germany and Scandinavia.
In late 2020, Spotta announced its development of the Forest Pod, currently in trials with Forestry and Land Scotland, monitoring Pine Weevils. The company aims to deliver the Forest Pod to market later in 2021.
Spotta's technology is also being applied to Red Palm Weevils, with initial trials set to take place in Q1 2021 and further trials in the Middle East later in the year, where the pests cause extensive damage to coconut and date farm crops.
To support the growth in partnerships and systems, as well as allow the business to further develop, the Spotta team expanded in the start of 2021.
Two new engineering recruits - Hanting Qin (R&D engineer) and Jordan Docker (firmware engineer) - along with Ekansh Mittal (commercial lead) and Helen Snook (office manager) joined the team, cementing the company's reputation as an exciting place to work and develop.
"It's been a busy 12 months and our ability to grow rapidly - despite the challenges our initial target market of hospitality faced from the pandemic - reflects both the huge opportunity for our technology and the fantastic contributions from our team," notes Robert Fryers, CEO and co-founder of Spotta.
"The year ahead looks even more promising with the launch of Forest Pod later this year, and trials due to start on our product targeting Palm Weevils. Insect pests cost £320bn despite the use of four million tonnes of pesticide to treat the problem each year: our monitoring systems can help reduce the cost and environmental impact of pesticides by detecting pests early."
Neil D'Souza-Mathew, Spotta's CTO and co-founder, adds: "The addition of new team members gives us a great footing to continue our business growth, from developing the technology and hardware to discovering further applications for our monitoring solutions.
"Bed Pod continues to prove its efficacy in international accommodation sectors. The trials of Forest Pod have been successful and we're nearing market launch. Our next project for Red Palm Weevil will further showcase the importance of monitoring as part of a wider pest management strategy."
21st January 2021