Did you know that between 2023 and 2024, Canada produced and exported 5.8 million metric tonnes of potatoes and potato products worth a staggering $3.6 billion? That’s roughly the volume of 13 CN Towers’ worth of starchy stuff, and more than Turks and Caicos’ gross domestic product. Did you also know that five percent or more of those golden spuds go to waste before they ever see the inside of a deep fryer? For shame, Canada.
“Storage is where crop value is protected or lost.”
Terry Sydoryk, Cellar Insights.
It’s a problem that demands solutions, and given Alberta’s role as Canada’s top potato producer (eat your heart out, PEI), it makes sense that Calgary’s Cellar Insights is among those looking to save the spuds. For its efforts, the startup has nabbed $500,000 CAD in early-stage funding from SVG Ventures Thrive.
Co-founded three years ago in April by sixth-generation New Brunswick potato grower Ross Culberson and CEO Terry Sydoryk, Cellar Insights has brought the potato-protection game into the digital age. Gone are the days of sifting through truckloads of tubers by hand. Instead, Cellar Insights utilizes remote storage monitoring that leverages machine learning to analyze signals like gaseous output, and monitors storage conditions, including temperature, humidity, and CO₂ levels to detect signs of early spoilage risk, shrinkage, and quality issues, helping minimize post-harvest loss.
Cellar Insights announced the funding on Jan. 21, with investment coming from the SVG Ventures Pioneer Fund, an early-stage agtech and agrifood fund. Monies will support the growth and commercialization of Cellar Insight’s potato-monitoring technology.
“Storage is where crop value is protected or lost,” said Sydoryk. “We use machine learning to understand, based on the readings, the predictability to get ahead of a problem that a grower would ultimately see or smell at some point in their storage.”
Currently Cellar Insights’ focus is on potatoes, but Sydoryk said the technology can conceivably be applied to any long-term produce storage.
“If you reach into machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) the data set is important, and the relevance of the data is root vegetable specific [at present],” he said. “[Expansion] is no different than where we’re starting now. We’re collecting data on potato storage, we’re collecting data on onion storage. Basically, then you’re looking to adjust or manage the algorithms accordingly.”
The folks at Cellar Insights have been working to validate its technology in places like New Brunswick and, recently, as part of Farm Credit Canada’s Innovation Farm Network in Manitoba. There are active deployments in Prince Edward Island, and relationship-building efforts underway in Idaho, and Washington State, as well, according to a press release.
RELATED: SVG Ventures Thrive aims to raise $75 million CAD for third agrifood fund
Last year, the company announced an oversubscribed seed fundraising round (though it did not disclose the total funding raised in that press release) led by Tall Grass Ventures and Accelerate Fund IV, Carrot Ventures, the University of Alberta Innovation Fund, UCeed and others.
Cellar Insights also received prior, early-stage accelerator support from SVG Ventures and Alberta Innovates in 2024 and 2025.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.