Zespri chief digital officer David Scullin says the business has built a global reputation as an exporter of healthy and nutritious kiwifruit. This achievement hasn’t come easily, and the organisation has implemented strict quality control measures, across its network of over 4,000 growers worldwide, to guarantee its promise of high-quality fruit.

To condition kiwifruit on its journey to arrive in each market’s requirement, a lot of different data is required to make decisions about how to adjust the conditions.

The Zespri digital team has developed two custom applications with key reports to capture the data quality and timeliness of voyage and container conditions and on-board fruit testing data.

The ‘Cool Chain’ digital initiatives were developed over a period of six months just in time for season start to manage conditioning programmes for fruit delivery into 51 markets around the world. The team developed new data management platforms and systems to send, receive and process critical conditioning information almost in real time to and from shipping vessels and container sensors.

The impacts of these initiatives included:

• In the case of the Cargo Condition App, used by ship captains with limited bandwidth to report on the voyage - data is easily transmitted back to Zespri in tiny daily packages (KBs instead of MBs) and immediately loaded into Zespri’s analytics platform.  

•  Hours of daily work to check & correct spread sheets have been eliminated completely, along with the many support hours.

• The opportunity to master some essential data and make it editable has provided better quality data for reporting.

• Export consignment product inspections, wharf operations technicians and Fruit Monitoring Technicians (FMTs) are able to update their piece of the Fruit Monitoring value chain in the app and send data in a timely fashion. The app can work offline for FMTs on vessels 

• 181.5 million trays of kiwifruit were delivered to 51 countries in 2021 with $3.58billion of net kiwifruit sales and Zespri expects similar volumes this year passing through the new cool chain applications.

A consistent, global way of working

Zespri is in the midst of its ambitious transformation programme called Horizon, which has seen investment of $72.6 million to March 2022.

The initial priorities have been core supply chain and finance systems and tranche one is on track to go live in November 2022.

“The solutions to be introduced this year stretch across the value chain,” says Scullin.  “They include creating a consistent approach to purchasing across Zespri and better visibility of spend and costs. It will streamline and strengthen our ability to plan, budget and forecast which are critical to helping deliver on our financial, sales and operational goals. Having one place to access all financial and planning data will enable a consistent, global way of working and more collaborative planning and proactive decision-making.”

The changes will improve the business’ ability to get more accurate and timely reports, improve planned versus actual costs visibility, and create better cash balance management globally. They will also minimise risk by reducing manual processes, according to Scullin. 

“Another element is investment in quality management to deliver a more consistent standard of product to our customers and consumers. This includes proof that the product has been grown and handled in accordance with regulations, customer specifications and consumer expectations,” says Scullin.

The team is also building a solid foundation of trusted data using a cloud-based analytics solution. 

The analytics platform combines business intelligence, analytics, and planning, using best-of-breed data visualisations and dashboarding for analytics and insights. New applications will generate real-time operational reporting right at the point of transaction capture. Reliable data and globally consistent master data processes means less time preparing data. Improved reporting will support informed, strategic and timely decision making. 

Trance two of the Horizon programme will include the grower enablement space, solutions for extended supply chain and quality management, integrated business planning and sales. 

“These components will require broad engagement with the kiwifruit industry to ensure solutions and processes are well designed and meet our collective needs for decades to come,” says Scullin.