Automating Agriculture: Greenhouse Turns to Robots for Tomato Harvesting
To offset rising labor costs, Westburg Greenhouse adopted Four Growers’ FANUC‑powered GR‑200 robot to automate tomato harvesting and boost sustainability.
Challenges
- Rising labor costs
- Speed and accuracy of harvesting
Results
Rapid deployment — robots operational within one week
Elevated productivity – around the clock harvesting
Significant harvest labor savings achieved through automated harvesting so that the labor force could focus on other tasks
Delivered one of the first commercially scaled, automated harvesting fleets
Future scalability, with plans to adapt the same platform for cucumbers and peppers
Story
Labor costs for greenhouse operators have been increasing for many years. To get labor costs under control and become future proof automation is needed. Westburg Greenhouse, a commercial grower located in the Netherlands, sought a scalable solution to automate harvesting while maintaining quality and efficiency.
Four Growers, a category leader in intelligent ag-tech platforms, developed the GR-200 robotic harvesting platform, powered by FANUC’s LR Mate robot. The system combines AI-driven vision and motion planning to identify and harvest ripe tomatoes with quick precision. FANUC’s robot was selected for its speed, payload capacity, reach, compact footprint and ease of use — all critical factors for greenhouse environments.
Westburg Greenhouse partnered with Four Growers to deploy the first operational fleet of GR-200 LR Mate robots. Within a week of installation, the robots were harvesting tomatoes, significantly reducing the need for manual harvesting labor.
The robots now harvest grape and cherry tomatoes around the clock, resulting in fewer people being needed for the harvesting process and freeing staff to focus on other crop tasks. With custom AI models and datasets, the system adapts to each grower’s ripeness standards and crop types. Westburg plans to expand its fleet and automate additional activities.
This milestone marks a major step toward future-proofing greenhouse operations — enabling growers to produce high-quality, sustainable food efficiently and affordably.
Thanks to the robot fleet day-and-night harvesting, we can complete the harvesting process with fewer people. This allows us to perform the crop work at the next level and elevate our entire business operations. We are looking forward to scaling up with Four Growers and work with more robots.
Bas van Leeuwen CEO – WestburgFANUC Products Used
LR Mate 200iD/7L
Fast at handling small payloads, the FANUC LR Mate 200iD/7L compact multi-purpose industrial robot offers an enhanced reach at 911mm and payloads of up to 7 kg.
- Max Payload:
- 7 kg
- Reach:
- 911 mm
Meet Four Growers, FANUC Authorized System Integrator
Four Growers, a FANUC Authorized System Integrator, was founded to provide healthy, affordable, local produce by reducing the production costs of greenhouse growers through robotic technology. Our technology currently optimizes autonomous tomato harvesting and will soon be available for pepper and cucumber crops.
About Westburg, Snack Tomato Specialist
Westburg is specialized in the cultivation and processing of the top segment snack tomatoes. Westburg grows red, yellow, orange, brown and ivory-colored snack tomatoes on 14 hectares in 3 greenhouses in Grubbenvorst (Limburg, the Netherlands). Westburg grows with its customers as the year-round color specialist in Northern Europe in snack tomatoes. Growing through cooperation and intensification with chain partners. Brothers Bas and Ton van Leeuwen are the proud entrepreneurs of Westburg.
