Dutch high-tech group Kind Technologies sells daughter company Vimec Applied Vision Technology B.V., allocating all resources on future growth to becoming a leading Agritech Group in Computer Vision, Robotics, AI and Data.

Proud to have found a safe harbor for one of our daughters
Kind Technologies acquired Vimec Applied Vision Technology in 2014, a company active now for almost 30 years in Quality inspection and process control of pharmaceutical primary glass packaging such as ampoules, vials, cartridges and syringes. Since then, the company has become a leading player in its field and grew significantly in turnover and size, contributing to a world where quality matters every day to warrant patient safety. Most recently, Vimec has been providing dedicated services for the inspection of vials used for the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We are extremely proud that Tiama, the world leading company in Quality inspection of glass containers (Tiama), has acquired Vimec and we have secured the future growth and continuity for our former colleagues, customers and partners. We see this as the ultimate reward of all the hard work that the team has put in”, says Alex E. Kind, CEO & Founder of Kind Technologies.

Strategy of Focus on the Agriculture market
With this transaction, Kind Technologies is now 100% focused on the Agriculture market. With its companies Crux Agribotics, KOAT and Martin Stolze, the primary focus lays on material handling, logistics, robotization and industrial automation of the greenhouse horticulture. “It is our ambition to be a leading Dutch AgriTech group that contributes to a better world, where distribution of plants and food is improved. We believe that our advanced automation and robotization combined with smart usage of data and AI will enable productivity increases per square meter at minimized waste. We bring the Dutch Brainport (High-tech Eindhoven region), together with the epic center of worldwide Horticulture, Greenport (Westland region)”, says Richard Vialle, CCO & Founder of Kind Technologies.

Growth strategy combining organic growth with buy and build
Kind Technologies invests heavily in R&D and innovation of existing product lines at KOAT and Martin Stolze. This results in a strong roadmap from robust material handling and logistics systems towards enhanced automation, robotization and data. In the future, all hardware developed by Kind Technologies will be smart and exchanging data. This data, with its self-learning algorithms (AI), will generate valuable information for growers, greenhouse builders and investors which they can combine with other data about climate and yield. Kind Technologies’ ambition is to be a leading group in this era and with Crux Agribotics, it is already realizing this in the post-harvest domain. With the development of the SortiPack ® robot family for automated grading, sorting, and packing, robots replace manual labor and AI algorithms generate data to minimize waste and to optimize yield, uniformity and weight per packed product. SortiPack® offers full track and tracing of the fruits and vegetables, handled from greenhouse row to package, pallet and customer.

Besides product development, Kind Technologies intends to accelerate its growth and presence through designated acquisitions. The objective behind this strategy is to complement the offering or to expand market access. Ultimate goal is to act as preferred system supplier to the value chain, offering greenhouse builders, growers, installers and breeders technology and data that they can use to optimize their core processes.

Partnering worldwide driven by open standards and extended local service reach
Besides internal R&D and acquisitions, Kind Technologies is pro-actively partnering with other parties in the market. This ties into the assumption of Kind Technologies to develop open systems that are interoperable with all leading systems in the segment from a technology perspective. Also here, besides technology focus, partnerships are being developed to extend the completeness of its greenhouse and packhouse automation and local service and sales reach. Earlier this year, Kind Technologies invested in a joint venture HORTILOGICS together with Berg Hortimotive and HortiKey (both part of Royal Brinkman) for integrated Smart Greenhouse Logistics. In the coming months additional partnerships will be developed in different regions of the world to ensure local presence and one-stop-shop to the greenhouse horticulture and fresh produce markets.