Arieli Capital, Ramat Hanegev To Partner With UAE For Agritech Projects

Israeli VC firm Arieli Capital and the Ramat Hanegev Regional Council, who teamed up in May to establish an agriculture tech innovation center in southern Israel, have entered discussions with officials in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) about advancing desert agritech projects, the entities announced this week.

Discussions began before Israel and the UAE announced a US-brokered UAE-Israel normalization pact last week, the parties said.

The UAE is the third country to have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. Those diplomatic ties also include opportunities for partnerships between the two countries in high-tech, health, academia, intelligence, and defense.

UAE representatives contacted the Ramat Hanegev Innovation Center to explore possible partnerships, the parties said. Several meetings have already taken place in Europe with Eran Doron, head of the Ramat Hanegev Regional Council, and representatives from the Desert Agricultural Center in Ramat Hanegev.

UAE officials are considering sending teams and delegations to Ramat Hanegev to undergo training in innovative desert agriculture as part of the negotiations, according to Or Haviv, a partner at Arieli Capital.

‘’We discussed the possibilities of employing top quality desert agriculture with specific crops, such as strawberries and blueberries that have a high quality natural taste in order to replace imports, and other crops such as tomatoes and more,” he said.

Arieli Capital teamed up with the Ramat Negev Industries and the regional council to establish an agritech innovation center in southern Israel in May 2020. The investment in the planning and establishment of the center was reported to be around $5 million.

Arieli Capital also signed a cooperation agreement with the other groups as part of a plan to expand the economic potential of the region’s agricultural sector and the agricultural research and development capabilities developed in the region in recent decades, the group said in a statement.

The Eilat Technology Center (ETC), a subsidiary of Arieli Capital, will lead the planning. The center will be located near the southern town of Ashalim and focus on areas of specialization in the region, including general agriculture, desert agriculture, marine agriculture, and cannabis. Five to 10 startups will be selected by senior officials in the agricultural and investment fields to participate in the center’s ag-tech accelerator.

Ramat Hanegev is one of the most successful agricultural regions in Israel and the largest municipality in the country. It covers 1.050 million acres and accounts for about 22 percent of Israel’s total land area. Its agricultural know-how has been developed over the past 50 years at the Desert Agricultural Center, with agricultural research and pilots conducted at the experimental station. Hundreds of applied research projects have been conducted in a vast range of fields such as efficient water usage and irrigation, soil diseases and pests, and agricultural techniques for improving the profitability of crops.