Press Release: Agricultural Pest Management Company Expands in West Lafayette, IN

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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (May 19, 2015) – Spensa Technologies Inc., a precision agriculture company specializing in pest management technologies, announced plans today to expand its operations here, creating up to 43 new jobs by 2019.

Spensa Technologies will invest $681,813 to expand its existing operations based in the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette, with funds being used to purchase IT equipment as well as additional office space to accommodate the growing team. The company currently employs 12 full-time associates in Indiana and will be hiring software developers, data analysts and hardware engineers. Interested applicants may search open positions online at www.purdueresearchpark.com/career or send questions to [email protected].

“Since Indiana’s early history, agriculture has played a vital role in our state’s economic development,” said Victor Smith, Indiana Secretary of Commerce. “Spensa Technologies is developing technology-driven products to keep our farmlands healthy and thriving. With nearly 500,000 Hoosier jobs supported by agriculture, these solutions are imperative for not only our state, but to the communities our exports serve across the world.”

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Press Release: Precision ag company launches new Web and mobile app to control pests, disease and improve soil nutrients

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Published: February 19, 2015

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Spensa Technologies Inc., a precision agriculture company in Purdue Research Park, has launched a new Web and mobile enabled application to help growers and consultants more efficiently scout insects, weeds and disease, identify agronomic issues and nutrient deficiencies.

The new application, called “OpenScout,” helps field and crop advisers to more easily identify and document the locations of insects, weeds, disease, nutrient deficiencies and general agronomic issues and assign a severity in a more precise manner so growers can strategically mitigate problems before they spread.

“Typically, a grower contracts with a consultant or other scouting service to track the crop throughout the growing season, and that is fine except that the information is commonly documented in a notebook and that is where mistakes can happen. This conventional technique often does not identify exactly where in the fields the problems are located or the severity of the problem,” said Johnny Park, president and CEO of Spensa and a Purdue research assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering. “OpenScout records this data and it is automatically geo-tagged and time-stamped for easy retrieval and visualization.”

OpenScout also tracks the scout’s route through the field as a record when no observations are recorded.

Field problems can be documented with photos or text or the user can select from a crop level picklist. Once a field has been documented through Open Scout, an electronic heatmap illustrates high-level trends during the growing season across fields where problems are located so growers can more precisely make improvements.

Open Scout is the third technology developed by Spensa Technologies. Other technologies are an electronic insect-trapping system called Z-Trap that detects pests, and MyTraps.com, an online pest management program.

The Z-Trap and MyTraps.com products are currently used in five continents around the globe.

Spensa was named the top company in the 2013 BioCrossroads New Venture Competition. The company is located in the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette and has received startup assistance through Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization hub in Discovery Park’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship.

For more information on Spensa’s software products: openscout.ag and MyTraps.com, and for Z-Trap.

Press Release: Engineering, sales leaders join precision agriculture company Spensa Technologies

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Published: December 10, 2014

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - An agriscience company that develops and markets precision agricultural technologies has expanded its staff for a second time this year with the addition of three professionals to help lead the company’s engineering and sales departments.

Spensa Technologies Inc., a Purdue Research Park-based company, has hired Chad Aeschliman as director of engineering, Nathan Stewart as regional sales manager and Phill Zimmerman as key account manager.

Aeschliman has more than10 years of development and design experience as a researcher in the computer and electrical engineering industry. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University.

Stewart has nine years of experience in the field of technical sales, marketing and business development. He earned his bachelor’s degree in agricultural systems management and a master’s degree in industrial and technical studies from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.

Zimmerman brings 18 years of experience in agriculture, sales, business development and technical support. He earned his bachelor’s degree in agriculture from Purdue. He also serves on the board of directors for the Indiana Agribusiness Council.

“Spensa Technologies will continue to grow with the vast knowledge and experience that Chad, Nathan and Phill bring to the company,” said Johnny Park, president of Spensa Technologies and a Purdue research assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering. “They make a great fit for our team and will help accelerate the company to its next stage.”

This is the second time in two months that the company has announced an expansion of the company’s workforce. Spensa now has 16 employees, double the number it had two years ago.

Spensa’s product lines include:

* Z-Trap, an insect trapping device that automatically detects the number of target insects captured by the trap and sends the data wirelessly to the grower’s mobile phone or computer.

* MyTraps.com, an online data application that helps growers and pesticide consultants electronically track the number of insects in their crop fields so they can better control crop damage caused by insects and improve the use of insecticides.

Press Release: Agricultural company receives $630,000 to further development electronic insect trap

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Published: November 5, 2014

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Spensa Technologies Inc., a precision agriculture startup in Purdue Research Park, received a $630,000 SBIR Phase 2 grant from the National Science Foundation to expand its electronic insect-trapping device, called Z-Trap, to detect and classify multiple insect pest species.

This SBIR Phase 2 award also will match any outside investment to the company up to $500,000 in the next two years.

“This NSF grant will be used to significantly increase the value of our Z-Trap device to help growers and crop advisers because it will allow them to collect more data and respond with greater precision with their pest management programs,” said Johnny Park, president and CEO of Spensa and a Purdue research assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering. “The Z-Trap is an important agricultural tool because it can automatically collect insect population data in real-time, reduce insecticide use and reduce costs.

“Insect management is a big business. In the U.S. in 2010, crop growers lost $20 billion to insect damage and spent $4.5 billion on insecticides.”

The Z-Trap was originally designed to monitor a single insect species per device. The research funded by NSF will allow one Z-Trap to monitor multiple insect species simultaneously.

“The expanded ability to monitor and control multiple insect species through Z-Trap is something that has been requested by our client base and that we have been working on for a couple of years,” Park said. “The short-team goal is to make the expanded use of the Z-Trap in various markets in agriculture with a long-term goal of making the device available even outside the field of agriculture, such as government and public health programs related to invasive species monitoring.”

The Z-Trap is currently used in five continents around the globe.

The NSF grant follows an additional $1.3 million that the company recently received from multiple investors and venture programs to further develop its online pest management program, called Mytraps.com.

Spensa was named the top company in the 2013 BioCrossroads New Venture Competition. The company is located in the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette and has received startup assistance through Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization hub in Discovery Park’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship.

In 2015 Spensa plans to launch a new scouting app called OpenScout that helps growers and crop advisers easily record scouting notes and photos as they walk in their fields.

For more information on Spensa’s software products: openscout.ag and MyTraps.com, and for Z-Trap.