Business Development Manager Brazil

Business Development Manager Brazil
Job Type	Full-time
Remuneration Scheme	Market standard (success based)
Location	TBD (Brazil)

The Position

Trapview is scaling up operations in Brazil. For this purpose, we are looking for an experienced and enthusiastic person to take on the role of local Business Development. If you want to be at the core of the team who is bringing world’s most advanced automated pest insect monitoring and forecasting technology to the Brazilian market don’t hesitate to contact us at info@trapview.com.

Your responsibilities:

·        Establish & maintain robust working relationships with key stakeholders locally and internationally

·        Perform desktop research to identify potential expansion opportunities, including the identification of core product partners (i.e. chemical companies, crop protection providers, large growers, farming groups, food processors and farm consultants)

·        Generate, follow up and convert lead pipeline on a national level

·        Generate new leads by contacting all customer segments

·        Schedule on-site meetings with all customer segments

·        Identify and attend specialized events in your region

·        Assist partners in their sales process by both offering support to the partners and taking part in select joint sales activities

·        After sales first line support

·        Help build Trapview presence in Brazil, including physical office and sales & support team

Your competences:

·        Graduate degree in Business or other sales related field AND/OR Graduate degree in biological or agricultural sciences with industry experience

·        Minimum 2 years of sales management experience

·        Must have experience in the farming/agricultural industry and even added value would be to have knowledge in the precision agriculture field.

·        Experienced negotiator with strong knowledge in complex deal-making & decision-making processes

·        Team player with the ability to lead multi-disciplinary & multi-cultural teams, to motivate virtual team members & to coordinate with internal & external stakeholders across hierarchy levels

·        Excellent analytical, presentation & communication skills

·        Proficiency in English

·        Independent, pro-active & goal-oriented entrepreneur with structured & flexible approach of assignments

Is this you?

Then we would like to hear from you. Email info@trapview.com with ‘Business Development Manager Brazil’ in the subject title and add both a CV and motivation letter. Applications are only considered in English and will be considered on a rolling basis until April 20^th, 2019.

About Trapview Trapview is a pest insect monitoring and forecasting platform developed by a Slovenian company Efos. Automated electronic traps enable efficient, nearly maintenance free monitoring of pest insects. Advanced artificial intelligence based processing of trap data assists customers to get accurate and real-time understanding of pest population dynamics as well as forecast of pest development stages in a specific area. This positions Trapview as key decision support tool for planning field activities and for optimal usage of crop protection. With Trapview nearly 40 different insect species are being monitored all over the world. You can follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter @Trapview_

Sales Manager Italy

Sales Manager Italy
Job Type	Full-time
Remuneration Scheme	Market standard (success based)
Location	TBD (Italy)

The Position

Trapview is scaling up operations in Italy. For this purpose, we are looking for an experienced and enthusiastic person to take on the role of Sales Manager. If you want to be at the core of the team who is bringing world’s most advanced automated pest insect monitoring and forecasting technology to the Italian market don’t hesitate to contact us at info@trapview.com.

Your responsibilities:

·        Establish & maintain robust working relationships with key stakeholders locally and internationally

·        Perform desktop research to identify potential expansion opportunities, including the identification of core product partners (i.e. chemical companies, crop protection providers, large growers, farming groups, food processors and farm consultants)

·        Generate, follow up and convert lead pipeline on a national level

·        Generate new leads by contacting all customer segments

·        Schedule on-site meetings with all customer segments

·        Identify and attend specialized events in your region

·        Assist partners in their sales process by both offering support to the partners and taking part in select joint sales activities

·        After sales first line support

·        Help build Trapview presence in Italy

Your competences:

·        Graduate degree in Business or other sales related field AND/OR Graduate degree in biological or agricultural sciences with industry experience

·        Minimum 2 years of sales management experience

·        Must have experience in the farming/agricultural industry and even added value would be to have knowledge in the precision agriculture field.

·        Experienced negotiator with strong knowledge in complex deal-making & decision-making processes

·        Team player

·        Excellent analytical, presentation & communication skills

·        Proficiency in English

·        Independent, pro-active & goal-oriented with structured & flexible approach of assignments

Is this you?

Then we would like to hear from you. Email info@trapview.com with ‘Sales Manager’ in the subject title and add both a CV and motivation letter. Applications are only considered in English and will be considered on a rolling basis until April 5^th, 2019.

About Trapview Trapview is a pest insect monitoring and forecasting platform developed by a Slovenian company Efos. Automated electronic traps enable efficient, nearly maintenance free monitoring of pest insects. Advanced artificial intelligence based processing of trap data assists customers to get accurate and real-time understanding of pest population dynamics as well as forecast of pest development stages in a specific area. This positions Trapview as key decision support tool for planning field activities and for optimal usage of crop protection. With Trapview nearly 40 different insect species are being monitored all over the world. You can follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter @Trapview_

Impact investor taking Trapview to a new level

Razdrto, Slovenia 14th of January 2019         

With nearly 40 different insect species being monitored over the world, Trapview is a key decision support tool for planning field activities and optimal usage of crop protection.

Trapview – a technology leader in automated pest monitoring and forecasting is pleased to announce, that it has raised €1.5 million equity investment from the Dutch impact investor, Pymwymic Healthy Ecosystems Impact Fund. The funding round follows significant advancement Trapview has made in the past two years. The investment will enable faster growth of the company by significantly enhancing its presence in selected markets and will at the same time accelerate further upgrades of Trapview technology.

“Our clients in more than 40 countries around the world testify that we have developed top notch technology for remote pest insect monitoring and forecasting. This investment supports our efforts in bringing Trapview to a far more advanced automated professional service, that helps our customers make optimal crop protection decisions at the right time. That will take us a few steps closer to our goal of enabling better and more sustainably grown food for everyone,” says Matej Stefancic, Co-Founder and CEO of Efos – the company behind Trapview.

“Having Pymwymic fund on-board, an investor which has impact embedded into its DNA, is really important for us. Our core values are aligned, which assures us that investment goes well beyond financial support,” Stefancic added.

“From the moment we came in contact with Trapview, we firmly believe that we found a team who developed superb groundbreaking technology with a well proven track record. Trapview’s mission to help the industry to grow better food and to support more sustainable practices, is a great match to our overall fund objective: support innovative and disruptive impact accelerators. We aim to enable Trapview to further scale its impact globally through adding our expertise, network and financial support.”, Rogier Pieterse from Pymwymic adds.

ABOUT TRAPVIEW
Trapview is a pest insect monitoring and forecasting platform developed by a Slovenian company Efos. Automated electronic traps enable efficient, nearly maintenance free monitoring of pest insects. Advanced artificial intelligence based processing of trap data assists customers to get accurate and real-time understanding of pest population dynamics as well as forecast of pest development stages in a specific area. This positions Trapview as key decision support tool for planning field activities and for optimal usage of crop protection. With Trapview nearly 40 different insect species are being monitored all over the world.

Trapview has been present on the market since 2012 and has previously raised equity investment from a Slovenian fund Prvi sklad and received an EU commission H2020 grant.

To find out more, contact info@trapview.com or follow them on LinkedIn or Twitter @Trapview_

ABOUT PYMWYMIC
Pymwymic is the “Put Your Money Where Your Meaning Is Community” of impact investors: a community of families, philanthropists and individual investors. Pymwymic aims to fund the new economy through the support of for-profit companies creating global solutions. Through its community gatherings and publications about impact investing, Pymwymic aims to share its learnings and grow support for businesses making a positive impact on people and the planet. In 2016 the group created the Impact Investing Cooperative with its first thematic sub-fund, ‘Pymwymic Healthy Ecosystems Impact Fund’, focusing on disruptive and innovative business models that restore and conserve our ecosystems.

For more information, contact info@pymwymic.com or follow them on LinkedIn or Twitter @PYMWYMIC

For a pdf version of the press release please go here.

The original pizza story and what Trapview has to do with it

The official story of pizza Margherita says, that it was invented in 1889 for Queen Margherita's visit of Naples. While different options were tested the one with tomato (red), basil (green), and mozzarella (white) was selected as it best represented Italian flag. The legend was born and the taste of true pizza Margherita (like the one in picture below) is something that is hard to forget.

In order to achieve the perfection a careful ingredients selection is crucial. One of the most important ingredients is tomato. True pizza Margherita (and also pizza Napoletana) use San Marzano tomatoes. Wikipedia says, that San Marzano tomatoes originate from the small town of San Marzano sul Sarno, near Naples, Italy, and were first grown in volcanic soil in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. One story goes that the first seed of this tomato came to Italian province of Campania in 1770, as a gift from the Viceroyalty of Peru to the Kingdom of Naples, and that it was planted in the area of San Marzano. It is considered the most important tomato variety of 20th century.  

Unfortunately San Marzano - as well as other varieties of tomatoes - is one of the favorite host plants for Cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera). This pest is not really picky and its caterpillars can feed on different host plants which makes it one of the most economically important pest worldwide with estimated damage of around $5 billion annually. To make things even more complicated, it is a great traveler and can travel several hundreds of kilometers using high altitude winds. Monitoring and acting against this pest is thus quite a challenge.

Here is where a network of automated pest monitoring traps comes into play. Knowing what is happening with pest population in real time is crucial. Knowing what will happen in next few days completely changes decision making progress. This is not about collecting only weather data and using that data in more or less adopted biological models. It is about automatically collecting pest data with relevant weather data and using artificial intelligence to forecast pest development way more accurate and location specific than what has been possible so far. In order to achieve that, high quality and high resolution data is needed. 

That's why at Trapview we are setting up networks of fully automated traps that include high efficiency catching (funnel trap) combined with self-cleaning mechanism to minimize maintenance needs. That's why the lures are standardized to have reliable and comparable catches. And that's why every device collects also relevant weather data. 

Of course all above is combined with proved Trapview platform, where the "magic" of intelligent processing of all this data is done. While "Magic" of artificial intelligence is often just a combination of buzzword and wishful thinking, in Trapview can be very concrete - like identifying targeted pest from the pictures with better accuracy than human.

There is so much knowledge hidden in the data. Utilizing machine learning helps us unlock this knowledge and deliver a simple, yet so powerful outcome - accurately telling you what will happen in the next few days. 

Matej Štefančič

May all your dreams be caught

Modelling of up to three different pests with Trapview Degree Days

The Degree Days functionality has been a popular feature of Trapview to complement the automated pest monitoring information. Following user feedback and market demand we have extended the functionality and introduced degree day modelling for up to three different pests simultaneously. We are using the occasion to give a quick overview about the method and how to use it in Trapview application.

Degree days modelling is a methodology to assess pest insect development stage based on heat accumulation. Insects are exothermic or cold-blooded, therefore their body temperature and growth are fundamentally affected by temperature in their environment. They require a certain amount of heat accumulation to reach certain developmental stages, such as egg hatching, pupating or adult flight. For example Codling moth requires around 250 Degree Days (DD) to begin egg hatch and around 350-600 DD to reach peak flight of the first generation.

If Trapview automated traps are equipped with temperature and humidity sensor like pictured above, the basic weather data (which are obviously a prerequisite for the degree days methodology) are automatically collected. Combined with other pest monitoring information and imagery Trapview allows for better identification of the pest’s developmental stage and to more accurately plan appropriate crop protection measures.

In order to use the degree days model within Trapview WEB application a few parameters should be set by the user initially. The first parameter is the date of the start of monitoring season or the date of when the first insects were captured/observed in the trap (so called biofix). The next parameters are Lower development threshold (LDT) and Upper development threshold (UDT). Below the LDT and above UDT development of insects is rapidly slowed or does not occur. The threshold values depend on particular insect species and also on monitoring location. Default values are provided in the Trapview application based on accessible information available. However, the thresholds can be modified based on actual pest development and saved to be used for the following seasons.

Degree days modelling in Trapview is also a convenient way to lower the cost of monitoring different pests simultaneously. Trapview WEB application allows users to set degree days models for up to three different pests per single trap. The feature can be accessed by following the link Select additional monitored pest in the Degree days tab (please see the picture above).

Helicoverpa armigera - The hungry traveler

Helicoverpa armigera (aka Old world bollworm / scarce bordered straw worm / corn earworm / cotton bollworm / cotton earworm / tobacco budworm / tomato worm) is a polyphagous and adaptive pest that attacks numerous crops like tomato, lettuce, soy, cotton, maize, common beans, chick peas, flax, sunflower, winter grains, citrus, wheat, barley, oats and sorghum. Worldwide, H. armigera has been reported on over 180 cultivated hosts and wild species in at least 45 plant families.

Its annual agricultural control costs and production losses amount to €5 billion globally. It is especially damaging because it feeds on the reproductive structures and bores inside the plant, making it difficult to detect and control. A very large number of insecticides are deployed to control this pest, which is already resistant to many compounds.

Get Full Article about H. armigera

Under adverse conditions, moths can migrate long distances. Adults can disperse distances of 10 km during “non-migratory flights” and hundreds of kilometres (up to 250 km) when making “migratory flights,” which occur when host quality or availability declines. Long-distance seasonal movements from low to higher latitudes, usually with warm winds preceding cold fronts, are most common in summer, and adults may migrate up to 1000km and reach Britain and other parts of Europe from sources in southern Europe and North Africa.

Because of its economical importance and distant migrations Trapview has initiated a 2-year project to create a dense network of fully automated traps in the Mediterranean basin, combining it with significant advances in automated pest recognition, data analysis and forecasting of pest population similar to weather forecasts. The project has been awarded a substantial grant from the EU Horizon 2020 SME Instrument programme, which is a direct recognition by EU Commission that EFOS' Trapview automated pest monitoring system is a breakthrough innovation in agriculture. The recognition allows EFOS to further position itself as a top leading crop and pest monitoring solution in the world.