Széchenyi István University, as an important player in drone research, together with ABZ Drone Kft. and MIB Invest Group Kft., has founded a drone development company, ABZ Innovation Kft. The company's innovation for the international market is the agricultural spraying drone, which performed exceptionally at the 90th anniversary International Agricultural Fair held recently in Serbia. According to experts, the drone development could be followed by further technological success stories based on the University's scientific innovations.

This is not the first time that ABZ Innovation Kft’s L10 spraying drone has been a success at an agricultural exhibition: this year's Fruit Logistica trade fair in Berlin was the basis for the international interest and recognition accomplished at the 90th anniversary International Agricultural Fair in Novi Sad, Serbia. At the prestigious event, the drone, produced in collaboration with Széchenyi University, won the "Innovation of the Year in the Agricultural Sector" award. The result of persistent work, the product has won an award in another country following Germany. The agricultural spraying drone, developed and produced in-house and designed for domestic and European agricultural conditions, combines all the current innovations available on the market. The product offers farmers safe and easy-to-use drone technology with ongoing support and service.

The success of ABZ Innovation Ltd.'s development is also a big deal because the 90th International Agricultural Fair is the largest agricultural exhibition in Serbia.

"The award at the Novi Sad exhibition is an extraordinary success. It can be called an outstanding achievement when a Hungarian product wins an innovation award in a foreign market," said Gyula Török, Managing Director of ABZ Drone Kft., adding that this is also important feedback on the development.

The drone is attracting considerable international interest. 

The next goal of the developers of the L10 spraying drone is to bring the device to the world market. Currently, the product has distributors in five different countries and has been launched in five countries. Gyula Török believes that initial feedback from users and distributors shows that the success of the launch is excellent.

"Our company has come a long way in a short period of time, as we are now at the point where we have interest from all over the world. So far, people from more than ten countries have approached us to get to know our product better. They are also curious about the new technology because it is the first European spraying drone to be CE certified, which means it has EU level conformity. There is obviously a huge demand for a high-quality spraying drone made in Europe," emphasized the CEO.

He underlined that the next step, in addition to the continuous development of the product, is to use the established relationships to generate more orders both at home and on the international market.

The sprayer drone can be an effective help for farmers.

Gábor Dósa, Managing Director of Uni-Inno Kft., Széchenyi István University’s knowledge utilization company, explained that the commercial exploitation of development results generated at the institution is of utmost importance for the University, one of the most successful examples of which is ABZ Innovation Kft. The Centre for Higher Education and Industrial Cooperation and Uni Inno Kft. directly support the exploitation activity by locating funding sources, providing business development advice and, last but not least, by managing the industrial property protection process. He added that, under the newly renewed IP management policy, the University will support the acquisition of as many patents as possible, by providing a one-off one million forint reward to each inventor obtaining a patent.

"We hope that this initiative also helps foster the development of commercially viable utilization opportunities at the university, similar to the spraying drone” noted Gábor Dósa.