A University of Manchester spin-out, based in Salford, that uses cameras, lights and AI, now on a robotic trolley, to spot stress in greenhouse crops before people can see it.
Fotenix makes plant-health scanning systems for greenhouses and vertical farms. Its technology uses 3D multispectral imaging, which means taking pictures of crops at many different wavelengths of light, some of which the human eye cannot see. Artificial intelligence reads these images to find nutrient problems, disease or stress early, often before they are visible. Fotenix says it builds a "digital twin", a computer copy, of the crop canopy each evening and sends the results to growers as heat maps and yield forecasts through its ALPHA platform. In early 2026 it released a robotic trolley that drives itself through crop rows, so the imaging can be moved around a greenhouse without fixed equipment.
Fotenix was founded in 2018 as a spin-out from the University of Manchester by Professor Bruce Grieve and Dr Charles Veys, who is now chief executive. The company's stated goal is to give growers precision tools that improve sustainability and profitability. Dr Veys has said that "growers are at the core of everything we do", and a trade report says the trolley is meant to support, not replace, people who scout crops by eye. Early work in agriculture also included imaging that can be fixed to tractors, robots or handheld devices to spot disease and judge when soft fruit is ripe.
The company's headquarters, according to a 2026 trade article, are in Units 31-32 Leslie Hough Way, Salford, Greater Manchester. A separate 2025 article simply describes it as Manchester based. Its customers and partners named in these articles include UK growers such as GrowUp, Angus Soft Fruits, Abbey View and Thanet Earth, and research and industry partners such as NIAB, Fargro and the British Tomato Growers Association. Trials of the trolley were carried out on commercial pepper and tomato operations across the UK.
From what we found, the culture is built around close contact with growers: the company has a trials coordinator, Molly Poulter, who works directly with them, and its leadership talks about speeding up adoption by fitting into commercial operations. It has also drawn on programmes such as the Agri-Tech Catalyst and the EIT Food Accelerator Network. We did not find a statement of company values or reviews from employees, so we cannot say more about day-to-day working life.
The mix of jobs in a company like this includes optics and camera engineers, electronics and mechanical engineers for the trolley, machine learning and software engineers, plant scientists who understand crop stress, and trials, sales and customer support staff. If you enjoy physics, biology, computer science or engineering, this is a place where those subjects meet in a practical way. The Greater Manchester base, close to the university where it began, is a link to that research.
Website: fotenix.tech
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