Philly food and beverage robotics company secures $10M Series A and major manufacturing partnership

The robotics industry continues to grow in Philadelphia, and automation startup Sojo Industries is the latest local success story.

Sojo uses robotics and automation to lower costs and track products in the food and beverage manufacturing process and raised a $10 million Series A on Tuesday. The funding will go toward developing Sojo’s products and boosting facilities beyond just Pennsylvania, Barak Bar-Cohen, founder and CEO of Sojo Industries, told Technical.ly. Along with the fundraise, the company announced a partnership with food and beverage manufacturer Schreiber Foods.

“One area of obvious collaboration is for us to be able to support innovation and packaging that retailers are driving,” Bar-Cohen said.

Headquartered in Bristol Pennsylvania, Sojo also has facilities in Redlands California, Indianapolis and most recently Temple Texas.

Sojo isn’t the only successful robotics company in the Philadelphia region. Callowhill-based autonomous farm robot company Burro raised $24 million in January. Advanced manufacturing and robotics were listed as one of the strongest industries in Philadelphia in Startup Genome’s annual Global Startup Ecosystem Report this year.

Sojo’s Series A will be put toward more product development

The new funding will also support the continued development of its products Sojo Flight and Sojo Shield.

Sojo Flight contracts its manufacturing services to similar facilities. The Sojo Shield software platform tracks and traces products in the supply chain.

The partnership with Shippensburg Pennsylvania-headquartered Schreiber Foods will implement both of those products into Shreiber’s manufacturing processes. The company is known for supplying cheese and yogurt products.

Former beverage company executive Bar-Cohen started Sojo Industries in 2021 to work on the process of manufacturing, packaging and transporting food and beverage products. Sojo’s specialty is packing variety packs for beverage brands. Earlier this year, Techncial.ly named the company as the No. 4 RealLIST Startup in Philadelphia.

The 85-person startup started raising this round earlier this year. Schreiber Foods’ venture arm Schreiber Ventures and early-stage fund Tech Council Ventures contributed to the round. Sojo previously raised almost $13 million.

“Right now we’re looking for smart solutionaries, fantastic people who want to be part of an innovative team,” Bar-Cohen said. “And that have the Sojo mojo to go out and help us scale.”

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.