FFRobotics: 6 Years After Its EIC Accelerator Grant, No Rollout

Fresh fruit is still picked by hand, and growers are "increasingly burdened by the scarcity of human labour", as the EU project file puts it. FFRobotics, a small company in Kadima-Zoran, Israel, set out in 2014 to replace them with a self-propelled machine carrying twelve robotic arms. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's January 2020 cut-off the European Commission selected its project, ROBOHARVEST, for a grant, and the EU paid €2,149,878.50 of a €3,071,255 budget to take the robot "from TRL 7 to full commercialisation".

The project closed at the end of 2022. Its final report on CORDIS describes "a fully robotic machine ready for commercial use in picking fresh fruit". Nearly four years later, no fleet of machines, no named customer beyond a single sale the chief executive mentioned in 2020, and no funding round has been announced. The company is still registered as active in Israel, but its public record has been silent since December 2023, so this article rates it dormant.

Where FFRobotics Stands Now

The Israeli Corporations Authority lists FFRobotics Ltd as an active private company, incorporated on 23 April 2014, with its most recent annual report filed for 2025 and its registered address care of Avi Kahani in Tzoran, according to the authority's open company register. OpenCorporates shows the same number, status and address. Israeli private companies do not publish accounts, so revenue, losses and staff numbers cannot be checked in the register.

Beyond the register, the public trail thins out. The company's website carries a 2020 copyright line, and its most recent event listing is Fruit Logistica in Berlin in February 2019. The last dated public comment from Kahani found for this article is from December 2023, when he told Capital Press: "It will take a few years until robotic solutions are widespread in the industry." The data provider Tracxn put the headcount at three employees as of 31 August 2026. With no news, product release or hiring found since that December 2023 comment, more than 18 months ago, this article rates the company as dormant rather than active.

The Technology: Twelve Arms and a Three-Fingered Hand

The FFRobot drives itself along an orchard row. Cameras at the base of each arm look at the tree, software identifies the fruit and classifies it by colour and size, and the arm is sent to pick the ones the grower wants. "We look at the tree, identify the fruit, classify the fruit to decide whether we want to pick it based on color and size, and we send the arm to do the picking," Kahani told the Basin Business Journal in April 2021. A gripper with three prongs takes hold of the apple and twists it off, and the fruit travels by conveyor to a bin. The 2020 and 2022 versions had twelve arms, six on each side, adjustable to the row width, according to Capital Press in 2020 and again in 2022. In 2018 the machine had four arms and sat on a human-driven truck, ASME's magazine reported.

The approach copies the human hand. Competitors took other routes: Abundant Robotics in California used a vacuum tube, The Robot Report noted in 2017, and another Israeli company, Tevel, uses tethered flying drones, according to Capital Press. The company's performance claims have shifted over time. In 2017 it said the robot would collect 85 to 96% of a crop and yield ten times more usable fruit than an average picker (The Robot Report); in 2018 the figure given was 80 to 90% of a crop depending on tree design, with harvesting costs about 25% lower (ASME); in 2021 the stated goal was up to 8,000 apples an hour (Basin Business Journal). No independent measurement of the machine's speed or picking rate has been published, and Kahani declined to give speed or price figures in 2020, according to Capital Press.

What ROBOHARVEST Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of companies selected at the 8 January 2020 cut-off names FFRobotics of Kadima-Zoran, Israel, for ROBOHARVEST, "Robotic Fruit Tree Harvester", with grant-only funding; no other company is listed for the project. CORDIS records the grant agreement as signed on 2 June 2020, with the project running from 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2022 under the SME Instrument phase 2 funding scheme. The objective says an earlier submission had won a Seal of Excellence with a score of 13.88, and it projected "potential annual revenues of €240M" from a 3% share of the market.

The project had four aims: demonstrate the multi-arm robot in field trials, make it more cost-effective, sign agreements with commercialisation partners, and draw up a short and long-term commercialisation and scale-up plan. The final periodic report, covering July 2021 to December 2022, says the vision algorithm and mechanics were upgraded into a machine "ready for commercial use", which "will be finally tested in Israel this harvesting season", and that pruning and thinning functions would only be completed in later phases. On partners it says the company "continues to approach the EU markets - France, Italy and England" and has "working relationships with a leading manufacturer in France". It names no signed agreement. The only deliverable on the CORDIS results page is a data management plan; no publications are listed.

1. Field trials of the multi-arm robotDeliveredTrials in Israel and limited harvest trials in Washington in 2021, per CORDIS and Good Fruit Grower.
2. Commercial-ready harvesterClaimedThe company says it is ready; no independent performance data or commercial deployment is public.
3. Better cost-effectivenessNot shownNo price, cost or return figures have been published.
4. Signed commercialisation partnersNot achievedThe report mentions "working relationships", not a signed deal; none announced since.
5. Market launch and scale-upNot achievedNo commercial fleet, distributor or revenue announced by October 2026.

Measured against the plan, the engineering half of ROBOHARVEST was done: the robot exists and has picked fruit in commercial orchards. The commercial half, which was the point of the grant, has no public evidence behind it. CORDIS shows the project closing on its scheduled end date and no extension, but the final Israeli test season the report pointed to has no published result.

What Has Happened Since the Award

Before and during the project FFRobotics built ties in the United States. It worked with Washington State University and the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission; the commission's executive director, Ines Hanrahan, said in 2022 that the company had "basically solved" an earlier problem of pulling off fruiting spurs with the apples, according to Capital Press. In May 2021 Western Growers picked it as one of 13 companies for its Global Harvest Automation Initiative, which offers mentoring and field trials, according to Agri-Pulse and Future Farming. In late 2023 Manoj Karkee, director of Washington State University's Center for Precision and Automated Agricultural Systems, was still working with the company, Capital Press reported.

The sales record is thin. In November 2020 Kahani said he had "sold one robotic apple harvester in Europe", without naming the buyer, and that COVID-19 component delays had made the company miss the 2020 Washington harvest, according to Capital Press. He planned demonstrations in New Zealand in February 2021 and demonstrations and sales in Washington from autumn 2021. In April 2022 he planned a limited-scale commercial harvest at a grower-packer that August and, if it went well, a wider offer in 2023. No result of those plans has been announced.

The Money

No equity round has been announced by the company. FFRobotics does not appear in the European Commission's EIC Fund portfolio, which lists 326 organisations across its pages; the award was grant only in any case. Commercial databases disagree with each other and with that record. Tracxn lists two grant entries, of $1,511,066 in July 2020 and $4,510,916 in June 2022, and names the EIC Fund among its investors, which the EIC Fund's own list does not support. Startupim, an Israeli start-up directory, gives a total raised of $24.7 million and calls the company "formerly FFMH-Tech"; no investor, announcement or filing behind that figure could be found. Neither database cites a source, and none of their figures could be verified.

Why Europe Should Care

Europe's fruit growers rely on seasonal hands. A European Commission study published in July 2023 examined France, Germany, Italy and Spain as the main destinations for agricultural seasonal workers. The Commission's Vision for Agriculture and Food, presented on 19 February 2025, notes that only 12% of farmers are under 40 and promises an EU digital strategy for agriculture. A robot that picks fruit without a picking crew fits both concerns, and France and Italy were the EU markets FFRobotics said it was approaching. The grant went to a company based outside the EU, and no European manufacturing or distribution partner has been announced.

The Verdict

FFRobotics has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, press reports and EU project data, linked throughout.