NEUROPUBLIC’s SMARTWINERY project continues to make progress on its work plan

The SMARTWINERY project was presented at European level during November at VINITECH-SIFEL 2024, the world wine industry trade fair where more than 45,000 professionals, 900 exhibitors and 80 countries were represented from November 26 to 28 in Bordeaux.

The project was presented, its main advances and special importance was given to the sustainability of wine production, which is made a reality in SMARTWINERY through three fundamental pillars: monitoring, analysis of data packets and connectivity. This presentation was made by Ricardo Jurado, technical director of Agrovin Products, as part of the round table “The digital future of the wine sector”, where there was also a journey to know what is being done in terms of digitization and R+D+i in Spain by the Wine Technology Platform (PTV) and the Digitization Hub of the Spanish Wine Federation (FEV). In addition, another successful case of ongoing projects was presented, which apart from SMARTWINERY, VIDEXPERT presented by the FEV.

SMARTWINERY was also present throughout the fair at the “Export Spain” stand, together with sector entities such as the PTV and the FEV.

The evolution

During this last year, the University of Murcia, Productos Agrovin and the Wine Technology Platform from Spain, together with NEUROPUBLIC from Greece, have worked to achieve the first advances in the European project SMARTWINERY.

This project started in November 2023 and will be completed by the end of 2026 with the aim of optimizing the winemaking process through the creation of a winery with 4.0 technology with the aim of reducing processing times and improving the quality of the wine as well as reducing the carbon footprint because of the winemaking process. For this purpose, SMARTWINERY has a budget of 3,052,896.18€, of which 2,137,027.32€ have been financed by the Interregional Investment Facility for Innovation (I3) within the framework of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

As part of the work plan, progress has been made with the installation of a demo plant at the headquarters of Productos Agrovin (Alcázar de San Juan, Ciudad Real). In this demonstration plant, equipped with the most innovative technology, the aim is to study the integration of all the equipment applied to the main production phases of various types of wines (white, rosé, red and sparkling), by integrating them into a digital platform for monitoring and data analysis.

The pilot plant, already installed and operational, has been launched for the processing of the first wines with the harvest of this year 2024. During the annual meeting of the SMARTWINERY consortium, which took place last October in Madrid, the first young wines from this experimental winery were tasted. At the same meeting, Agrovin’s technical team presented the progress of the demo plant and how it has been working during the weeks it has been active.

In this year of work, within the framework of SMARTWINERY, not only has progress been made at the technical level, but also in the field of communication and involving the main stakeholders in the progress of this project.

The starting point

Parallel to the progress in the installation of the experimental winery, two online knowledge hubs were held. One of them was held in Spanish and was aimed at wine producers and researchers at the national level, and its main objective was to present the project to the attendees and open a space for debate in which to listen to their comments and suggestions about the project. The second of these knowledge hubs was held with the same intention, but in this case, aimed at wine producers and researchers at the European level.

Both virtual meetings were held with the aim of maintaining a direct relationship with the sector by presenting the project and the future plans for the pilot plant, thus being able to hear the opinions and advice of the attendees.

Next steps

As next steps within the framework of SMARTWINERY, we intend to continue improving and updating the winery, and to continue with the production of wine in the coming vintages of 2025 and 2026. In addition, several events are planned to present and visit the experimental winery, as well as presentation events in Greece, where all the data processing is being carried out at the NEUROPUBLIC headquarters.