The Spanish agri-food industry has long accepted that digitalization is urgent. Yet data point to a different reality, since only 24.9% of companies with revenue below €2 million have a specific digitalization plan, according to the latest study published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on digitalization in the agrifood sector. At the opposite end, 79.6% of businesses with revenue over €50 million are already working with more mature technology strategies.
The sector’s heterogeneity shapes this picture. Sub-sectors such as egg products, beverages, or fish show substantially higher levels of digitization than primary production, where the adoption of new tools remains limited. In the cereal segment, the first sector-specific study on digital maturity, produced by Orisha Agrifood in collaboration with the Spanish Cereals and Oilseeds Trade Association (ACCOE) in 2026, finds that three out of four companies (75%) already work with an ERP, but the use of advanced technologies, such as sensors, data-analytics platforms, or artificial intelligence, remains marginal. More than 54% of cereal firms still do not incorporate AI in any of their processes.
The main barriers hindering progress are the fear of not recouping the investment, gaps in rural connectivity, and a lack of technological know-how among leadership. Added to these is a structural reason that is rarely named clearly: most market solutions have not been designed for the operational realities of agriculture. A generic ERP does not know about campaigns, batch traceability, or cereal contracts. The generalist offering does not solve specific problems.
The sector’s response: uniting to digitize
Part of the business fabric has answered this situation: consolidation. Companies that for decades operated independently have chosen to merge into larger structures to gain access to technology, talent, and investment capacity that, separately, would have been out of reach. This is the case of Ayanet TIC (€5,249,449 in revenue in 2025), Gregal (€4,099,057) and TIPSA S.L. (€3,134,825), three software companies specialized in agrifood software that have unified their operations under the Orisha Agrifood umbrella.
The logic behind this move is that none of the three companies, individually, would have been able to develop a modular cloud platform with integrated artificial intelligence, multi-subsector support, and the capacity to compete on large-scale projects. Together, under a single corporate strategy, they could. The fusion not only expands the group’s financial muscle, it transforms its competitive positioning. Orisha Agrifood has become, after the integration, Microsoft’s largest partner in Spain specializing in the agrifood sector, with vertical solutions for cereals, animal feeds, fruit, wine, and other subsectors of the value chain.
The move by these three Spanish organizations signals a trend that is consolidating across Europe, focusing on specialized software industry groups. All of this is aimed at maintaining investment in R&D and serving clients with increasingly complex operations. Thus, for many firms, this is the strategy to pursue in order to ensure survival and relevance.
