From EIC Accelerator Grant to Pilots: Agresta's Forest Inventory

Agresta is a worker cooperative founded in Madrid in 2000 by ten forestry engineering students, and ForestMap is its attempt to sell forest inventories without sending crews into the forest. In the 9 January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 forerunner of the EIC Accelerator, the European Commission selected its project FORESTMAP, "Quick and cost-effective integrated web platform for forest inventories", according to the Commission's list of Phase 2 winners, which names Agresta as the only company on the project. The grant agreement was signed on 13 September 2019, eight months after the cut-off, and the EU contributed €558,821.38 to a total cost of €798,316.25, according to CORDIS.

The promise was a web platform that would turn airborne laser scans (LiDAR) and statistical models into a full forest inventory in minutes, at up to 85% lower cost than fieldwork, and a business ready to launch in six more EU countries. Seven years later the platform exists and, according to Agresta, now covers all of Spain. Outside Spain, the public record shows pilot areas, a translated interface and free test reports, but no announced paying customers.

Where Agresta Stands Now

Agresta is active. In May 2026 the carbon standard body Verra selected it, alongside Space Intelligence and a TerraCarbon consortium, as one of three data service providers to produce deforestation risk maps for REDD+ carbon projects under a five-year agreement, with Argentina and Equateur Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo as its first jurisdictions, according to Verra and Decarbonfuse. In June 2026 the Spanish agriculture ministry and the EU's rural development fund approved €125,854.19 for Agresta's "Oficina Forestal en Red", a 24-month online advisory service for forest owners in five Spanish regions that draws on ForestMap data, according to the cooperative's announcement.

The cooperative's size is reported differently. Its 2022 social balance, an audit format of the Madrid social economy network, counts 70 people: 35 worker members and 35 workers who are not members. A profile published in April 2024 by the European cooperative federation CECOP says Agresta employs 50 people, 35 of them members. The two sources give no explanation for the gap. In 2023 Agresta was first runner-up in the Green Transition category of the European Social Economy Awards, according to Social Economy News and CECOP.

The Technology: Counting Trees From the Air

A classic forest inventory sends crews to measure trees in sample plots and extrapolates from there, which takes weeks. ForestMap replaces most of that with laser scans of the canopy. In Spain it uses the LiDAR flights of the national aerial photography programme (PNOA) and plot data from the National Forest Inventory, run through Agresta's own models; a user draws an area, picks the species and product, and receives a PDF report plus a map layer at 25-metre resolution, according to the Spanish open data portal datos.gob.es. The ForestMap website says the tool also uses Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, and offers the first report free.

The tool predates the EIC grant. Agresta announced it as an online inventory service in January 2017, and the EU paid €50,000 for a feasibility study under the same title, WoodStock, from March to June 2017, according to CORDIS. In December 2018 ForestMap won the CGI Big Data Business Challenge of the Copernicus Masters, according to Agresta; CGI lists it among the challenge's finalists. In November 2019, a month after the EIC project began, a factsheet in the EU-funded Rosewood 4.0 network said the operational version covered 10 Spanish provinces and more than 3 million hectares, with a volume bias under 20%, according to Cesefor's Rosewood site.

The claimed cost saving of up to 85% compared with a field inventory comes from the company's own project summary on CORDIS. No independent comparison of ForestMap's cost or accuracy against field inventories was found.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

The CORDIS objective promised to optimise the models for more tree species, download LiDAR data automatically from national servers, fly its own LiDAR in Italy and Portugal, and deliver reports with a bias below 15%. The final periodic report, covering October 2021 to July 2022, split the goals into technical ones (updated models, more species, "an enhanced multilingual web platform and mobile app") and commercial ones (pre-commercial agreements, a business ready to launch in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Finland, and updated pricing). It reports every work package complete and says COVID-19 forced a four-month extension to the end of July 2022, as in the previous period.

Part of that can be checked. A LiDAR flight covered a pilot area of about 12,900 hectares in northern Portugal in June 2020, followed by two field campaigns, according to the ForestMap blog. In July 2022 the platform became available in English and the languages of all seven pilot countries, but outside Spain users could only query the areas inventoried so far, up to 3 hectares per user, free of charge, according to a ForestMap post. A test in Burgundy followed that month, and a fire risk module in October 2022, according to the same blog, which has published nothing since. The project page still says the tool is "available in several regions of Spain".

1. Updated models for more tree speciesDeliveredValidation report and milestone logged in the final report.
2. Multilingual web platformDeliveredEight languages since July 2022 on forestmap.eu.
3. Mobile appNot foundNo ForestMap app announced by Agresta or listed elsewhere.
4. Own LiDAR data in Italy and PortugalPartlyPortuguese pilot flown in 2020; no Italian flight reported.
5. Pre-commercial agreementsNot foundNo agreement or customer named in public sources.
6. Launch in six more EU countriesPilots onlyPilot areas and free 3-hectare tests; no paid launch announced.
7. €6.9M cumulative net benefit, 2020 to 2024Not publicNo ForestMap revenue disclosed.

The Spanish Rollout

At home, coverage grew slowly and then all at once. By June 2024 the datos.gob.es listing named 11 provinces: Álava, Asturias, Burgos, Gipuzkoa, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, Palencia, Soria and Vizcaya. In 2025 Agresta used money from the Spanish labour ministry's social economy programme, financed by the EU recovery fund NextGenerationEU, to build ForestMAP-IA, which adds a conversational AI assistant and satellite change detection every six months, according to its July 2025 project note. In September 2025 the cooperative said the project had extended coverage "a todas las regiones de España" (to all regions of Spain) and turned a pilot tool into a national one, with a launch planned for 17 October 2025, according to its anniversary announcement. No independent source confirming national coverage or user numbers was found.

The Money

Agresta raised no outside equity, which fits its legal form: a worker cooperative is owned by its members, and the company does not appear in the EIC Fund portfolio, as expected for a grant-only award. Cooperatives in Madrid register with the regional cooperative register rather than the commercial register, so no filed accounts could be retrieved from a free public register; the register number comes from the cooperative's legal notice. The only financial figures found are in its 2022 social balance: income of €2,401,389, expenses of €2,383,799, and 99% of any surplus put into reserves.

That leaves the project's business case unchecked. The CORDIS objective forecast a cumulative net benefit of €6.9 million from ForestMap in 2020 to 2024. Agresta has not published ForestMap revenue, and the whole cooperative's income in 2022 was €2.40 million, of which 24% came from subsidies. Whether staff numbers grew since the award cannot be established, because the only two counts found disagree.

CORDIS lists two other Horizon 2020 projects for Agresta: the WoodStock feasibility study and CARE4C, a research staff exchange on carbon-smart forestry led by the Technical University of Munich, in which Agresta received a net EU contribution of €67,500, according to CORDIS.

Why Europe Should Care

The final CORDIS report ties ForestMap to the EU forest strategy for 2030, which asks for better forest monitoring, more wood mobilised under sustainable management and protection against fires. Cheap inventories matter most for small private owners, who rarely pay for field surveys; the report cites more than 432,000 EU forest-based industries, 95% of them SMEs. ForestMap also runs on public European data, from national LiDAR flights to the Copernicus Sentinel satellites, which is the kind of downstream use the EU's space programme is meant to create. Agresta's Verra contract shows that its remote sensing skills now sell to buyers well outside Spanish forestry.

The Verdict

Agresta and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.