20 February 2018 –  Earth-i, one of Europe’s most prominent New Space companies, has been awarded a grant of £2.7 million from the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme, which supports UK space firms tackling global challenges.

The grant will enable Earth-i to launch the ACCORD programme in Kenya and Rwanda.  ACCORD has been specifically developed to help smallholder coffee farmers in Africa improve crop quality and yield.  It combines Earth-i’s very high-resolution satellite imagery with  WeatherSafe’s data platform to provide extensive crop, weather and pest analysis - and shares the information via a mobile app. 

ACCORD will enable farmers to identify where more water, fertiliser or pesticides are needed to address unpredictable weather, pests, diseases, nutrient depletion or other factors which reduce coffee quality and quantity.

ACCORD evolved from work carried out by Earth-i and Weathersafe in Burundi.  Together the two companies performed surveys of Burundi coffee farms using very high-resolution satellite data, conducted crop yield analysis and developed bespoke web applications to deliver the results of this analysis. 

The ACCORD project was one of only ten programmes to receive funding as part of a joint initiative between the Government’s Industrial Strategy and the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme, which uses UK space expertise to deliver innovative solutions to real world problems across the globe. 

Richard Blain, CEO of Earth-i, said “Coffee is the second most traded commodity globally and vitally important to the economies of some of the poorest countries in the world.  Agriculture is just one of a multitude of sectors where our imagery – and the insights drawn from those images – is improving lives on Earth.”

Science Minister Sam Gyimah said: “The UK’s space sector is going from strength to strength. It pioneers new technology and provides jobs for 40,000. Today I can announce that the space sector’s capabilities are being put to use to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges.

“The UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme will help developing countries tackle big issues like disaster relief and disease control, while showcasing the services and technology on offer from our leading space businesses.”

Today’s news follows January’s successful launch of Earth-i’s VividX2 satellite, a service demonstrator for the Vivid-i Constellation, the world’s first full-colour, full-motion video satellite constellation.

The new commercial constellation will be the first of its kind to provide full-colour video; and the first European-owned constellation able to provide both video and still images.

Vivid-i will be a major leap forward for the Earth Observation industry significantly increasing the ability of companies and institutions to monitor, track and analyse activities, patterns of life and changes at any location on Earth. It will provide a number of innovative capabilities including:

Footage will be available for analysis within minutes of being captured and will improve decision-making and response times in a wide variety of scenarios from change detection to object identification, from disaster response to infrastructure monitoring.

About EARTH-i 

Earth-i currently provides satellite imagery and various analytical services from the DMC3/TripleSat Constellation of three very high-resolution optical satellites in conjunction with Twenty First Aerospace Technology (21AT), and the KOMPSAT series of satellites with SI Imaging Services offering both optical and SAR data.  

It already has a wide range of big budget customers including National and Local Governments and a multitude of specialist geospatial companies and other commercial organisations.

The launch of its own constellation is a natural evolution of Earth-i’s existing and well-regarded image and EO analytics business and will enable it to meet the rapidly growing demand for high-resolution EO data, high-frame rate image acquisition, ultra-high-definition full-colour video, and very high frequency revisits.

Earth-i is also developing a cutting-edge service to enable easy acquisition and analysis of imagery, and use advanced algorithms and machine learning to extract further value from the data gathered from its constellation.

Earth-i is headquartered in Surrey, UK on Europe’s largest academic space campus near to many other UK space-related companies including SSTL.