Hugh stuck to the “pacey” theme of today’s meeting and packed a lot of information into a short presentation. (Which made it somewhat difficult to accurately record!)
He has been in Auckland for two years and prior to that was in South Africa, Canada, Indonesia and Brazil. He is South African, his wife is English and there was some mention of Australian’s in the family (but we won’t hold that against him). He has two sons attending St Kentigern’s, and a Golden Retriever (who stays at home).
After 20 years in the mining industry Hugh felt it was time to move on and in NZ he became involved with Compac and TOMRA. What do they do? World wide they are the leading provider of bottle recycling (which Huge advised, NZ is well behind on) and they also “deliver solutions to the world’s leading packhouses”. This is “AgTech” stuff e.g. very clever computerised huge machines which sort every type of fruit.
The AgTech revolution is all about protecting and enhancing the fresh fruit brand promise; and in amazingly quick time Hugh threw terminology like decommoditization, singulated and individual rotation at us.
He gave us great insight on how this amazing technology can sort 600 fruit a minute, eliminating hand sorting and bringing maximum value for farmers. As these clever machines sort, grade and size; the computers also use a high definition camera to check for sweetness, blemishes, rot, fungus, etc. All ensuring only quality produce ends up on shelves. (Huge let slip that actually, the highest grade fruit in NZ ends up on shelves in Asia!)
Thanks Hugh – in double quick time you have added a new dimension of interest to our fresh fruit shopping.