TERRAS GAUDA PROMOTES AN R&D PROJECT IN SPAIN FOCUSED ON ADVANCED PRECISION VITICULTURE, WITH PARTICIPATION FROM COMPANIES AND RESEARCH GROUPS FROM 8 COUNTRIES
Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Latvia and Spain are represented in this project, supported by European funds and with a budget of €6 million
TERRAS GAUDA is promoting an international R&D project in Spain based on advanced precision viticulture, with participation from companies and research groups from 8 countries: Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Latvia and Spain. The TERRAS GAUDA vineyard is to be the site of the Spanish pilot project, while the two other locations included in the European study are in Germany and the Czech Republic.
The project, called Foodie, aims to collect and reorganize already existing information from outer space, provided by COPERNICUS (the environmental monitoring program managed by the European Space Agency), GALILEO (Global Navigation Satellite System of the European Union), GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) and GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems), among others. These data will be correlated with those obtained from the network of installed sensors, which in the case of Spain, are located in the TERRAS GAUDA vineyard, where the land has been divided into differentiated plots according to topography, orientation, altitude, slope, weather and soil conditions.
Technology companies taking part in the project will develop software to interpret and maximize the value of the data received, which is an important step towards optimizing the performance of each homogeneous area in the vineyard.
In practice, data is collected or accumulated in real time about the vigor and vegetation indexes of the grapevines, and thus, their nutritional status, the climatic conditions of each area, etc. With this information, and through the development of specific software, the winery’s technical team will be able to make more timely decisions about phytosanitary treatments and nutrient supply, predict yields, organize the harvest by plots and varieties, etc.
The information provided by the software will allow TERRAS GAUDA Wineries to extract the entire qualitative potential from each previously differentiated plot or homogeneous set of plots, which will result in better management and performance and reduce the environmental impact.
INTERNATIONALIZATION.- The TERRAS GAUDA Group has promoted its internationalization strategy this fiscal year, capturing 4 new markets in Oceania, Asia and the Americas. New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Peru are the countries to which it has started to export its wines, which are currently marketed in 56 countries around the world.
Added to the opening of these four new markets are two recent conquests: the United Arab Emirates and India (with 8,000 Wine Club members). Moreover, 2014 also saw the expansion of distribution agreements in countries with great potential, where the winery was already present: Japan, Denmark, Germany, Brazil and China; these are considered strategic markets for TERRAS GAUDA, which seeks to strengthen its presence abroad.
The USA, UK, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Germany and Holland continue to be leading international markets for the winery, which has experienced strong growth abroad in recent years, in parallel to its positioning in throughout Spain.
