G.R. Gamberini and the EIC Accelerator: Ozone Sprays

G.R. Gamberini is a small maker of crop sprayers and pneumatic sulphur dusters in Villanova di Castenaso, outside Bologna, founded in the late 1960s as G.R. di Gamberini Remo, according to its company history. In the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of 3 April 2019, the European Commission selected OXIR, a project to spray greenhouse and field crops with water in which ozone is dissolved, as a replacement for chemical fungicides and bactericides. The Commission's list of selected companies names two Italian beneficiaries for OXIR: G.R. Gamberini (listed in "Castesano") and MET s.r.l. of San Lazzaro di Savena, an ozone generator maker that coordinated the project. Gamberini's share of the EU money was €527,177, according to CORDIS.

The project ended in April 2022. The mobile sprayer it produced, sold as MOWAT, is in the catalogues of both companies. What has not appeared is any public figure for machines sold, hectares treated or revenue from ozone, and Gamberini's own turnover was lower in 2023 than before the grant.

Where G.R. Gamberini Stands Now

The company is active. It is registered as active, with five employees in 2023, according to the company data service aziende.it, and it is listed as an exhibitor at the EIMA agricultural machinery fair in Bologna in November 2026 (hall 37, stand B/7), according to the EIMA exhibitor catalogue. The products listed there are weed control booms, dusters, atomisers and nebulisers; ozone is not mentioned.

Ozone remains a side line on its own website, where an "Ozonoterapia" page presents MOWAT as a "spraying machine for zero-residue plant protection treatments" made with MET. The home page still advertises the company's stand at Fieragricola Verona in February 2018, and no news about OXIR has been posted on the project website since October 2021.

The Technology: Ozone Dissolved in Spray Water

Ozone (O3) is a strong oxidant that breaks down into oxygen within minutes. MET makes ozone generators; Gamberini has built sprayers and dusters for decades. MET's MOWAT product page says the sprayer was designed and built in collaboration with Gamberini, that it uses ozone at 1 to 4 mg per litre to kill fungi, bacteria and viruses on leaves, comes with tanks of 500 to 1,000 litres and is sold in two versions, MOWAT E for field crops and MOWAT A for orchards and vineyards.

The claimed advantages over chemical pesticides are no residues on the crop, no packaging to dispose of, workers able to re-enter a treated greenhouse after a short interval, and, the companies say, no selection of resistant strains, because ozone's oxidising action is non-selective. The CORDIS objective promised 85 to 99% removal of fungi and bacteria, 90 to 99% of viruses, a one-minute treatment with a 20-minute safety interval, and savings of €6,000 per hectare per year in chemicals and labour. These are the consortium's figures. No peer-reviewed paper from the project is listed on CORDIS; its two publications are articles in the trade magazine VVQ, Vigne Vini e Qualità.

The idea predates the grant. MET alone received €50,000 in 2015 for a feasibility study called O3MET, and in November 2017 the two companies showed an atomiser that mixes ozone into water at the FuturPera pear fair, with "encouraging" first results in orchards, FreshPlaza reported. An OXIR article from January 2020 says MET had worked with Gamberini for "almost ten years" on ozone in agriculture, according to the project website.

What OXIR Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The grant agreement was signed on 31 October 2019 and the project ran from 1 November 2019 to 30 April 2022, at a total cost of €2,457,257.50 with an EU contribution of €1,720,080.25, according to CORDIS. MET's own Horizon 2020 page gives the duration as 24 months; CORDIS shows 30. Whether the project was extended is not stated in either source.

The sources also differ on Gamberini's role. The Commission's April 2019 list and MET's website name Gamberini as a beneficiary and partner, and the final report says MET and Gamberini signed the consortium agreement. CORDIS, however, lists Gamberini, like TEBO S.p.A., as a "third party" linked to MET rather than as a signatory of the grant. TEBO is registered at Via Palazzetti 22, next door to MET, and does not appear in the Commission's list.

The promise was to take OXIR "from its current preproduction state to market readiness and develop the first commercial product", in a fixed version for greenhouses and a mobile one. The final periodic report says the mobile prototype was "continuously improved to reach a final version of OXIR mobile sprayer", that field tests were run under the Agri2000 test centre in Castel Maggiore following EPPO guidelines, and that OXIR is now "tested, certified, prepared for industrial production and ready for market expansion". It also says Covid-19 prevented the planned presentation to investors in the United States, and that an IPR strategy covered a patentability study and "the patent deposit" for the mobile solution. CORDIS lists no patent, only the EU trademark OXIR (no. 018327321), filed on 28 October 2020 in the names of both MET and Gamberini, according to the CORDIS results page.

The project website publishes the trial reports for 2020 and 2021, on vineyards, berries, baby leaf, basil, cannabis, cucurbits, tomato, melon and pepper, under its work packages page. Of the ten sites, seven were in Italy and one each in California, Agadir in Morocco and Valencia in Spain, according to the OXIR home page.

1. Market-ready mobile sprayerDeliveredMOWAT E and MOWAT A on sale, per MET and Gamberini.
2. Field validation at ten sitesDeliveredTrial reports for 2020 and 2021 published on oxir.eu.
3. Fixed greenhouse set-upNot shownNo fixed OXIR product in either catalogue.
4. Certification for industrial productionClaimedStated in the final report; no certificate published.
5. Patent for the mobile solutionNot foundOnly a trademark is listed on CORDIS.
6. US market presentationNot achievedCancelled because of Covid-19, per the report.
7. 5% of Mediterranean greenhouses (10,000 ha) in 5 yearsNo dataNo sales or hectare figures published.

After the Grant: Fairs, Then Silence

MET presented OXIR and its trial results at the Macfrut fair in September 2021 and announced a new orchard and vineyard cart for October 2021, FreshPlaza Italia reported, and the project was shown at EIMA 2021, according to the OXIR website. In February 2023 the US trade magazine Good Fruit Grower reported that the Italian ozone approach "gets results with commercial clients in vineyards"; the article is paywalled, and the clients are not named in the parts that are public.

Eight months later MET's Federico Ponti described the market as hard to win. Neither company has published a customer list, a sales figure or a follow-up funding round for OXIR, and no EIC Fund investment is involved: the 2019 SME Instrument Phase 2 was a grant-only scheme. OXIR is Gamberini's only project on CORDIS.

The Money

G.R. Gamberini's revenue was €628,172 in 2019 and €631,832 in 2020, and €513,518 in 2023, a fall of 18.7% from 2020, with a net loss of €20,896 and personnel costs of €147,586 for five employees in 2023, according to aziende.it, which reproduces filings with the Bologna business register. The same service reports €127,025 in public funding and state aid from 2021 to 2024 besides the H2020 grant. These figures come from one aggregator; the accounts for 2021, 2022 and 2024, and the free filings of the register itself, could not be checked for this article. Gamberini's own website confirms the VAT number, the REA number BO-445397 and share capital of €50,000.

With EU money of €527,177 against annual revenue of about €630,000 before the project, the grant was close to a year of turnover for Gamberini. On the public record it did not translate into a larger business.

Why Europe Should Care

Cutting chemical pesticide use is part of the EU's Farm to Fork strategy. The Sustainable Use Regulation, a proposed law to halve pesticide use by 2030, was rejected by the European Parliament in 2023 and withdrawn by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in February 2024, Euronews reported. That leaves residue-free alternatives such as ozone to compete on cost and results alone, which is the barrier MET described in 2023. A working sprayer built by two small Bologna firms is a modest but real contribution to that toolbox.

The Verdict

G.R. Gamberini, MET and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.