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Open Innovations
by 123 Factory GmbH
Sainsbury's

Sainsbury's Understanding On-Farm Water Quality

Deadline: 2026-09-25 Official site
Materials and Resources
Agtech Cleantech Internet of Things (IoT)

Overview
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Sainsbury’s, the UK’s second-biggest retailer, is running an open innovation challenge on the Leading Edge Only platform to independently verify water quality outcomes across its farm supply chain. Nutrient runoff from agriculture, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus from fertiliser and manure, can harm ecosystems and regulatory compliance, yet infrequent sampling and manual reporting miss event-driven pollution such as rainfall-triggered runoff. Sainsbury’s wants scalable, low-burden solutions that combine direct measurement with independent datasets to build credible, auditable evidence of water quality and trends over time. Solutions at all stages are welcome, with particular interest in pilot-ready ones; applications close 25 September 2026.

Focus Areas
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  • Measuring key water quality parameters such as nutrients, turbidity, pH, and sediment load near agricultural land
  • Detecting and quantifying changes in water quality over time, including improvement, deterioration, or stability trends
  • Identifying and attributing nutrient-related impacts such as fertiliser or manure entering water bodies
  • Integrating independent data sources such as weather, soil, satellite, and catchment monitoring, with event-driven risk detection or modelling
  • Scalable across livestock farm types (beef, dairy, poultry) with minimal hardware and simple workflows for farmers

Benefits
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  • Pilot with a major UK retailer
  • Opportunity to scale if the pilot succeeds
  • Contribution to an approach focused on proving good practice rather than catching farmers out

How to Apply
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  • Submit a solution through the challenge page on the Leading Edge Only platform by 25 September 2026; outputs should be transparent, auditable, and suitable for assurance purposes.