Innokas Medical entered into cooperation agreement with Finnish company GrainSense Oy in 2016. The mutual interest for the companies is to develop a long-term, fruitful co-creation partnership, where the basic pillars are close collaboration and transparent, trustworthy communication.

GrainSense Oy is a spin-off company from the Technical Research Center of Finland, VTT. GrainSense’s mission is to expand to the worldwide markets with their cloud-based services and technologies based on optical technology solutions. The company’s first innovation is the truly hand-held device for grain quality measurement.

“Our hand-held device enables farmers, seed producers and plant breeders to rapidly measure the key quality parameters of their crops, and to make decisions that can improve the profitability and pricing. This kind of information can be seen as an important selling point as it can improve the position of producers in the grain markets”, says GrainSense’s CEO Edvard Krogius.

With GrainSense’s innovation, for example the protein content of cereals and other crops as well as the content and moisture of oil and carbohydrates can be measured. Based on these measurements the value and the processing costs of the harvest can be calculated and evaluated already when the grain is still growing in the field. The innovation has received several patents.

“Our device is hand-held with wireless features and cloud-based measurement service, so the measurements can be calculated even at afield. The measurement process takes only 5 seconds, and the reliable research results require only a very small amount, about 3-5 grams, of samples. Our method produces valuable information for farmers, seed producers and plant breeders quick and easy”, Krogius tells.

The sales volume for the first year is forecasted to be hundreds of devices

The cooperation between Innokas Medical and GrainSense started already in 2016, when Innokas started to build the first prototypes for GrainSense. At the same time, the mutual product development project was launched, where Innokas and GrainSense finalized the manufacturability of the device.

”We have cooperated with Innokas Medical for 2 year period now, and we’ve managed to co-create the original idea of ours to final, commercial product”, Krogius tells.

The product was officially launched on the markets in autumn 2017. The first feedback has been really good and encouraging, so the actual production was started in the beginning of this year at Innokas’ Kempele factory. The device is manufactured and assembled by Innokas, excluding the calibration part, which is done at GrainSense’s factory in Oulu before the device is sent to the end-users.

“We’ve started to sell our device in Baltics, in Sweden and in Finland. At the same time, we’re actively searching for new distributors from Northern Europe. The sales forecast for this year is hundreds of devices”, Krogius continues.

 GrainSense's device for grain quality measurement.

Innokas Medical’s Business Development Director Mikko Kangas sees the project as very interesting one for Innokas - even if the company usually focuses on different kind of projects related to medical devices only.

“GrainSense’s device is very interesting and will surely revolutionize the tracking of both quality and cost-efficiency of the cultivation in the coming growing seasons”, he discusses and continues:

“I see that the cooperation between Innokas and GrainSense indicates that Innokas’ processes and procedures that has been built according to regulations and different kind of requirements conforms also with other industries when we’re talking about the manufacturing of very challenging and quality critical products.”

Close co-creation partnership supports the success of both parties

The excellent start between GrainSense and Innokas Medical has set the future, mutual goals for cooperation on a high level. The mutual interest of the companies is to develop a long-term, fruitful co-creation partnership, where the basic pillars are close collaboration and transparent, trustworthy communication.

“We wanted to choose a cooperation partner with the following characteristics: they’re professionals in the field, they’re agile in their operation and they’re competitive with the quality issues. In addition, Innokas was competitive with the price, Innokas has very strong history within the medical device development and manufacturing and they have great references, which also strengthened our decision making. The cooperation with Innokas has worked very well so far”, Krogius tells and continues:

“Especially valuable characteristic I’d like to emphasize is the high-quality customer experience Innokas has offered us, as well as the open, honest and trustworthy communication between us. This excellent start creates a good foundation for close co-creation partnership, which supports the success”, Krogius tells.

 GrainSense's grain quality measurement device is been manufactured at Innokas Kempele factory.