Tuesday, August 31, 2021
FOSS is investing an additional 250MDKK and stepping into a new digital business area with the establishment of a new large digital division. Under the name FOSS Software Services, the new division will create the digital solutions of the future for the global food industry. The new division is expected to have 100 employees within three years and will, for the first time in the history of FOSS, as a global market leader in analysis solutions for the agricultural and food industry, develop hardware independent services.
After several years of massive growth, annual doublings of revenue and a steep development curve in the digital business, FOSS is ready to take the next big step. Over the years, the company’s digital development has introduced connected, intelligent, and integrated analytical solutions to customers in the agricultural and food industry. New solutions that have made it possible to monitor, troubleshoot and quickly solve problems as well as streamlining the food production. A few of the most popular current services from FOSS are FossManager™ and SmartCare™, which have contributed to FOSS now also being the leading supplier worldwide, when it comes to digitized analysis solutions for the agricultural and food industry.
FOSS is accelerating the digitalisation of the food industry
The FOSS solutions of the future must not only include the latest digital features, they must also be purely digital cloud-solutions. The large growth in the digital business in recent years, together with major investments in development and innovation, has created a unique foundation for FOSS, which has provided an opportunity to attract many strong digital forces to the FOSS Innovation Centre in Hillerød. FOSS Software Services will offer an integrated software product package that covers the most critical areas in food safety, supplier quality management, compliance, production quality and efficiency. It is a new product category where all products are characterized by being hardware independent.
“We are incredibly proud to be market leaders worldwide, but we also know that it is not something that came from nothing or will remain so without constant renewal. When FOSS is the leader in the global market for analytical solutions for the agricultural and food industry, it is because we are tirelessly fighting to be first with new and groundbreaking innovation. We have succeeded because we continuously reinvest 10% of our revenue in new innovation and have some insanely skilled employees. That is also the reason why we are making this investment now and building the new division, rather than taking the perhaps more ‘traditional path’ and attributing an existing business through acquisitions. We already have more experience and knowledge internally than we can find and buy in another company. That is why we invest the money in developing our own business and in finding the most qualified candidates for the new division ourselves,” says Kim Vejlby Hansen, CEO of FOSS.
New technology must secure adaptation to the challenges of the future
Supply and demand in the agricultural and food industries are developing rapidly. New types of food, such as plant-based meat and dairy products, are gaining more attention and rising in popularity among consumers. In addition, an unstable climate affects the global supply of raw materials and increases the demand for smoother business control and better monitoring of production. Transparency in the product chain is becoming increasingly more important and process control and compliance are reaching a level where the standardised measurement methods are becoming unsustainable for food companies. This is the new and harsh reality that the FOSS customers are facing.
The new technologies from the FOSS Software Services division will be created in the existing locations in the FOSS Innovation Centre in Hillerød, as well as in the company’s department in Warsaw, Poland. Together with the investment of 250MDKK, FOSS will hire a lot of new employees. The company has already embarked on the recruitment work and the hunt for the new digital specialists. The majority of the new positions will be within job categories such as software development, computer science and specialisation in food security. In addition to the expansion of the existing offices, FOSS is opening a new startup hub in Copenhagen, which will provide new opportunities for innovation and research collaborations. The specific location is not finally in place, but the desire is to enter a creative and innovative environment, surrounded by entrepreneurial startups, with connections to the agricultural and food industry.