Agribusiness is increasingly technological, always looking for solutions that help to enhance results, as Brazil is one of the main producers in the world. With this in mind, entrepreneur Luis Felipe Mellão founded ARYS, a Brazilian aerospace technology company, developing and manufacturing unmanned systems for agricultural spraying and also collecting georeferenced data. The company is in full growth with projections of increasing the volume of products sold by five to seven times for 2022 and reaching revenues of R＄ 100 million in 2023.
ARYS innovates in the market as the only Brazilian manufacturer of gasoline-powered drones for agricultural spraying and large-scale services. The research began five years ago with the mission of offering cutting-edge technology accessible to everyone in a scalable way and with low operating costs.
“And a country like Brazil, which has continental dimensions, a lot of agricultural and climatic diversity, and with complex market seasonalities, we realized right from the beginning that the technologies existing in the international market were far from being able to serve Brazil with scalability, quality and profitability. . Before founding the company, I followed the agricultural sector to understand what the market needs were. In recent decades, there has been an aggressive horizontal expansion in Brazilian agriculture, which makes it difficult to optimize resources to combat any anomalies during harvests and ends up resulting in even large losses in a sector that no longer has much leftover margins", explains Mellão, CEO from ARYS.
“We had to find a way to create effective solutions that are constantly aligned with the current market needs. Electric drones do not have enough autonomy and a very high cost per hectare to overcome the early adopter phase and become mass adopted” , complete.
The systems used by aerotech are designed from end to end, focusing on the reality of Brazilian customers, making the products more performant. “We choose the best components and raw materials and have state-of-the-art manufacturing processes, both additive and subtractive. Our technological development also allowed us to radically verticalize, providing an exceptional opportunity for the company's growth, maintaining extremely competitive product costs and superior performance compared to the competition”, states the founder of ARYS.
“ARYS has a team specialized in the aerospace and agricultural sector, enabling dialogue with farmers, facilitating understanding of the difficulties these professionals face in their daily lives and proposing technological solutions that today optimize processes in the field”, adds Renato Franzoni, director of the company's Technology.
One of the differences between the spraying drones produced by ARYS is the fact that they operate on gasoline, unlike others on the market that are battery-powered. According to Mellão, this guarantees more autonomy, as they can fly for up to 45 minutes, while electric vehicles can maintain flight, on average, for just 10 minutes. And they also offer greater savings, as an electric drone has a variable cost of at least R＄40 per hectare, and ARYS's cost from R＄6 to R＄9 per hectare, in addition to being more sustainable, as they do not use batteries , which today are not disposed of in the most appropriate way and end up damaging the environment.
“As it is manufactured in Brazil, our drone has local after-sales, which translates into high mechanical availability. Today we are committed to delivering replacement parts within 48 hours”, highlights Mellão.
As a vertical company, ARYS is able to offer an 18-month warranty (twice that of imported drones). “And also, because we have full control of the project, this allows us to advance in technology, keeping up with the pace of market innovations. And we can also update the product’s software remotely, just like a smartphone, without having to change it.”
The first version launched by the company is the STRATUS H12, a combustion drone with a capacity of 12 liters, an autonomy of 45 minutes of flight and application of up to 8 hectares per hour. Recently, the STRATUS H30 also arrived on the market, which features a 30-liter tank, the same autonomy of up to 45 minutes of flight and yields up to 16 hectares per hour. The H30 also has a solids and seed dispersion system, with a 40 kg tank. “That’s why the H30 is also advantageous for livestock farmers and mass reforestation projects”, highlights the company’s CEO.
ARYS is currently growing, with national expansion plans. The number of employees grew 11 times between 2021 and 2022, from just 5 to 55. The company has an office in São Paulo and headquarters in São Carlos, in the interior of the state, where the factory that produces drones operates.
By the end of the year, the company will inaugurate a new plant and open more than 40 job vacancies, producing 450 drones by the end of 2023. Today, aerotech has a client portfolio that includes rural producers, service providers of services and partnerships with large cooperatives, such as Copercana, which is among the 90 largest agricultural companies in the country.
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