Key Takeaways
- EarthOptics has opened a new 14,500-square-foot laboratory, office, and warehouse facility in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, expanding its analytical footprint alongside its existing state-of-the-art laboratory in Emeryville, California.
- The facility colocates EarthOptics' analytics laboratory with its Sensor and Automation team, a strategic pairing designed to accelerate laboratory automation and robotics development with the goal of building a world-class automated soil measurement operation.
- The Raleigh-Durham facility will serve as the primary home for EarthOptics' Soil Library, the company's growing archive of soil samples from across North America, with a revamped cataloguing system designed for greater scalability and research accessibility.
- The location provides strategic access to Research Triangle Park and Raleigh-Durham International Airport, positioning EarthOptics within one of the United States' leading hubs for science, technology, and agricultural innovation.
- The facility was designed with built-in capacity to expand analytical capabilities as customer demand grows, supporting EarthOptics' mission to deliver speed, scale, and precision in soil measurement for soil fertility, biology, physical properties, and carbon quantification.
EarthOptics, a leader in soil intelligence and agricultural data insights, has opened a new 14,500-square-foot facility in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, combining laboratory, office, and warehouse operations under one roof. The facility expands the company's analytical capacity alongside its existing Emeryville, California laboratory and introduces a colocation model designed to accelerate lab automation through the integration of its analytics and Sensor and Automation teams.
EarthOptics Raleigh-Durham Facility: Location and Design
Located approximately 20 minutes from Research Triangle Park (RTP) and Raleigh-Durham International Airport via I-540, near Triangle Town Center, the facility positions EarthOptics within one of the United States‘ most active hubs for science, technology, and agricultural innovation. The 14,500-square-foot space houses laboratory, office, and warehouse functions and has been designed with built-in capacity to expand into additional analysis and analytics as customer demand grows. The lab will process measurements underpinning the quantification of soil fertility, biology, physical properties, and carbon.
EarthOptics Colocates Analytics Lab and Sensor and Automation Team
A defining feature of the new facility is the colocation of the analytics laboratory with EarthOptics' Sensor and Automation team, a group recently rebranded to reflect the company's focus on automation and robotics. Housing the two teams together is intended to dramatically accelerate laboratory automation efforts, with the goal of building a robotics-powered, automated workflow operation at scale.
“Bringing our analytics operations and our Sensor and Automation team under the same roof is a force multiplier. We're not just scaling a lab — we're engineering the future of how soil is measured. The synergy between our scientists and our automation engineers is going to let us move faster, process more samples, and deliver the kind of reliability the market demands as the soil analytics economy grows,” said Lars Dyrud, CEO of EarthOptics.
“This facility was built with automation in mind from day one. Having my team working side-by-side with our laboratory scientists lets us close the loop between hardware development and lab operations — fundamentally changing how quickly we can scale throughput without sacrificing accuracy,” said Hunt Bowers, Senior Vice President of Sensors and Hardware at EarthOptics.
EarthOptics Soil Library Gets a Purpose-Built Home
The Raleigh-Durham facility will serve as the primary location for EarthOptics' Soil Library, the company's growing archive of soil samples from across North America. The Emeryville laboratory will retain a smaller on-site inventory to support its ongoing analytical operations. As part of the expansion, EarthOptics is revamping its cataloguing system to improve the scalability and accessibility of the library for ongoing research and calibration work.
“Our soil library is one of the most valuable assets in the industry, and giving it a purpose-built home allows us to scale it the way our customers and partners need us to. This facility reflects where we're headed as a company — faster, more automated, and built to deliver the soil intelligence the market increasingly depends on,” said Patrick Schwientek, Chief Technology Officer at EarthOptics.
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