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Radfords embraces AI optimisation with shareholding in PlantTech

Royce Sharplin  —  November 17, 2020

Radfords and PlantTech are proud to announce Radfords has become a founding shareholder of the PlantTech Research Institute. 

PlantTech is based in Tauranga, NZ and was formed with the mission: "To raise the competitiveness of regional businesses and accelerate innovation by finding solutions to horticulture challenges through Artificial Intelligence technology."  

Dr Mark Begbie, CEO of PlantTech (left), celebrates with Radfords CEO Adam CumingRadfords is looking forward to collaborating closely with PlantTech and joins other founding shareholders: Zespri, Bluelab, Robotics Plus, Trimax, Cucumber, Eurofins, The University of Waikato and Priority One. PlantTech has built a team of skilled AI and Data Scientists to accelerate AI and Machine Learning in the horticulture space. In the last 12 months, PlantTech has delivered outcomes for its partners in crop estimation, non-destructive fruit testing and supply chain optimisation. PlantTech CEO, Mark Begbie, said “Radfords bring a wealth of experience spanning the whole supply chain and across multiple fresh produce sectors. Their knowledge and insight, together with their routes to market, mark a very exciting broadening of PlantTech’s reach and potential.”

 

Radfords has developed software applications across the Fresh Produce value chain from Field to Market.  Radfords CEO, Adam Cuming sees the PlantTech shareholding as an important next phase in Radfords evolution.  "Our applications help our clients manage data, process and business insights for their produce across their growing, inventory management, traceability, quality, Sales and Grower Payments functions.  To deliver a step change in reducing produce loss and improving produce performance across the value chain we will work with PlantTech to accelerate our knowledge and create data-based AI decision making tools for our customers.  By consuming data from various sources to supplement our own data highway, we can use AI decision models to create actions in the field, and help optimise Packhouse inventory to market, improving the "moment of taste" for the consumer.  By working with PlantTech and other partners we believe we can make a real difference in helping our clients grow the world's food basket to meet increasing demand for Fresh produce"