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Published on 04/04/25

CAES student wins 2025 FABricate competition with poultry automation tech

By Makenna Grace Reavis
2025 FABricate contest winner with judges
FABricate is an entrepreneurial pitch contest where students develop their ideas for a new food product, new agricultural technology, new food or agricultural-related business or new environmental or sustainable business. Sean Snarey, a CAES graduate student in agribusiness, took home the $10,000 prize late last month for his automated poultry rehanging system. (Photo by Sean Montgomery)

In the most competitive FABricate contest to date, Sean Snarey, a graduate student in agribusiness in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics in the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, took home the $10,000 prize late last month for his automated poultry rehanging system.

Through his company TLS, Snarey is developing a system to automate a labor-intensive step in poultry processing that has one of the highest labor turnover rates in the poultry industry.

Poultry rehanging requires workers to lift partially processed chickens and hang them on shoulder-height hooks around 20 times per minute. This repetitive motion causes muscle strain and fatigue, possibly leading to musculoskeletal disorders, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Snarey’s system includes a robotic arm to pick up and hang the poultry and a locating system that helps the arm position the birds correctly as they move through processing.

Building a business around industry needs

Having worked in the poultry industry, Snarey recognized the need for a better system.

“I was working the poultry production floor, so I was living it,” he said. “I saw the hardships of retention, the turnover. Then I had to fill in for a day doing it because there weren’t enough people there, and it’s hard.”

Snarey’s innovation comes at an opportune time. Recently, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins instructed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to extend line-speed waivers, allowing poultry plants to operate at faster speeds. Automating the process of rehanging poultry would allow these companies to maintain production speeds and reduce costs without causing further strain on line workers.

Snarey plans to use his winnings to advance his business by hiring a team and screening consulting companies to patent and test the technology.

Empowering dedicated innovators

Chris Rhodes, executive director of the UGA Innovation District, works closely with students throughout the contest to develop their ideas and nurture innovation and creativity. Rhodes said he loves watching students develop as entrepreneurs and young adults, learning to think outside the box and cultivating important skills like public speaking and critical thinking.

“FABricate’s not just for yourself and what you want to do with your venture,” Snarey said. “It’s making you a better student.”

The competition gets tighter each year, said Rhodes, adding that the semifinalists in this year’s contest would have been finalists in previous years.

“They all really came with a lot of polish,” he said, remarking on how well-developed each business idea was in 2025.

In addition to TLS, the finalists of the 2025 FABricate contest included:

  • Finance major David Gad, founder of P.O.W.E.R Outreach, a nonprofit that provides support resources for widows in Nigeria
  • Mechanical engineering major Brooke Richards, founder of Canopy, an intelligent tree-root locating system to help developers build around mature trees
  • Management major Jehu Tae, founder of Terrafibre, a hemp and bamboo-based cardboard alternative
  • Animal and dairy science major Raine Cox, founder of CAC, a company that helps struggling farmers restructure their business
  • Biomedical physiology majors Lee Fongeallaz and Tyler Holley, cofounders of Dr. Cal, a lactose-free caffeinated chocolate milk geared towards college students
  • Mechanical engineering majors Ben Pumphrey and Grant Baumann, cofounders of Skyfall Space, a low-cost solution to remove small debris from Earth’s orbit

One of this year’s judges, Jasmyn Daniels, won the first-ever FABricate contest in 2018 with her online vegan bakeshop, VTasteCakes. A 2018 CAES alumnus in food industry marketing and administration, Daniels said the contacts she made through UGA and the FABricate contest helped her get to where she is today and encouraged participants to hold on to the connections they make in college.

About the FABricate contest

FABricate is an entrepreneurial pitch contest where students develop their idea for a new food product, new agricultural technology, new food or agricultural-related business or new environmental or sustainable business. The competition is hosted by CAES but open to UGA students from all backgrounds and colleges within the university.

To learn more about the contest, visit caes.uga.edu/fabricate. 

Makenna Reavis is a student writer for the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Authors:
Makenna Grace Reavis
Experts/Sources:
Chris Rhodes
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