MONDRAGON Ventures invests in NÉBODA

With the aim of fostering the creation of new businesses in strategic and future-oriented sectors, MONDRAGON, together with its cooperatives, has invested over the past decade in around 30 external companies. One of the most recent transactions this year has been the acquisition of a stake in NÉBODA, an indoor vertical farming startup founded in 2019 by Iván García Besada and Roberto Estévez Quintela, created with the ambition of providing a real solution to the major challenges facing the agricultural sector, such as labor shortages, climate change, and pressure on natural resources. The transaction was carried out together with CDTI Innovación and UNIRISCO GALICIA, through MONDRAGON Ventures.

Thanks to its scientific and industrial approach, NÉBODA’s proposal combines profitability, sustainability, and quality, positioning itself as a benchmark among the new generation of European AgriFoodTech companies. The company has developed its own technological platform that enables the sustainable and scalable cultivation of leafy greens and aromatic herbs – such as basil. By applying engineering, automation, and scientific expertise, the company has managed to quadruple yield per square meter over the past three years, achieving globally leading production levels while reducing water consumption by more than 90% and minimizing its ecological footprint.

The company is currently in a pre-industrial phase, with a 200 m² facility located in Vigo and a production capacity of 8,000 kg per year.

This new investment is part of MONDRAGON’s corporate strategy to activate entrepreneurial capabilities and promote new business ventures among its cooperatives. “The development of vertical farming technologies is being led by pioneering countries such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany. At MONDRAGON Ventures, we see a window of opportunity for our cooperatives in the field of industrial automation, with high-quality, efficient, and profitable crops, both in agricultural production and in the manufacturing of facilities and their subsequent maintenance. In this way, we want to respond to a clear upward trend in the market, with expected double-digit annual growth over the next eight years,” said Joseba Sagastigordia, Director of MONDRAGON Ventures.