Pessl Instruments Launches Pessl Instruments South Africa to Build Africa’s Largest Agrometeorological Network
18 March 2026, Cape Town: Pessl Instruments GmbH has announced the official establishment of Pessl Instruments South Africa (Pty) Ltd – PI SA, a 100 % wholly owned subsidiary based in Cape Town. The formation of PI SA marks a strategic expansion of the company’s long-term commitment to Africa and sets the foundation for large-scale agricultural infrastructure development across the continent.
While METOS solutions have already been successfully implemented in South Africa through initiatives such as the EUREKA SA Climate Smart Agriculture project, including more than 200 weather stations installed across the Western Cape, the establishment of PI SA represents the next step: scaling from strong regional adoption to a continent-level infrastructure rollout.
Building on over 41 years of global expertise in agrometeorology, IoT systems, and decision-support tools, Pessl Instruments South Africa is launching a privately financed initiative to deploy and operate 100,000 professionally managed, real-time METOS weather stations across Africa. This will create the densest climate smart agricultural data network on the continent and position the project as a long-term private sector investment in agricultural resilience and food security.
“Our goal is simple but ambitious: to build the largest real-time weather network in Africa,” explains Gottfried Pessl, Founder of the project and CEO of Pessl Instruments.
“Successful agriculture starts with quality data. If farmers have reliable, local weather intelligence, they can irrigate smarter, reduce risk, protect their crops, and become truly profitable. Africa has the land, the people, and the talent. What it needs is trusted data. That’s where METOS comes in,” he added.
The 100,000-station initiative is designed to help farmers reduce risk, lower production costs, and improve yield predictability. By combining real-time field measurements, historical pattern analysis, and advanced weather forecasting, the system delivers practical guidance on spray timing, irrigation scheduling, planting windows, harvest conditions, and disease and frost risk.
To ensure strong execution at continental scale, the initiative is supported by a C-level Honorary Executive Advisory Board providing strategic guidance on governance, partnerships, capital structure, scalability, and risk management. The Board includes internationally recognized experts in irrigation finance, mechanization, regenerative agriculture, climate policy, farmer development, and weather technology.
The program operates under a flexible subscription model designed to lower entry barriers for farmers. Participants receive a professionally installed METOS weather station at NO COST for the first six months and subscribe only to the digital services relevant to their operations.
“Africa has the capacity to feed not only its own population, but also the global demand for food. However, challenges such as climate change, poor infrastructure and access to various resources (including data for decision making) hinder the continents’ ability to maximise its agricultural potential. This initiative is all about better decision making and managing risks at farmers’ level towards improved sustainability. It will be showcasing scientific rigor and trustworthiness of data emanating from a well-developed and maintained weather station network across the continent,” added Dr. Ilse Trautmann, Climate-Smart Agriculture & Policy Expert, and Honorary Advisory Board Member.
The official launch of both Pessl Instruments South Africa and the 100,000-station weather initiative will take place in Stellenbosch on 25 March 2026.
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