In this customer spotlight, we are shining a light on a Harvest Quality Vision (HQV) user in the UK, Avalon Growers Producer Organisation (AGPO). This collectively owned marketing organization was formed in 2016 and is 50% grower-owned. Over a dozen apple and pear growers across the Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Kent and Hampshire regions have combined forces to manage the sale and marketing of their own fruit through AGPO. They have been using Croptracker since the 2020 harvest. For this piece, we spoke with Simon Everett, who is the farm manager at Moatlands Farm, one of the largest growing members of AGPO.
Simon emphasized the benefits of using Croptracker’s Harvest Quality Vision size assessments for their new streamlined marketing process with AGPO. Because AGPO is grower-owned, it benefits from not having a large middle management marketing team that adds a lot of overhead costs to the sales process. The staff at AGPO are in close contact with all the growers to help provide growing and audit support throughout the season. However, the main role of the AGPO staff is to manage all the marketing and sales of the growing members inventory. This involves closely monitoring the available stock across many smaller and disparate long-term storage facilities. In order to have better visibility across remote locations and CA-sealed rooms, AGPO uses HQV for size sampling.
HQV is a tool for our marketing team that saves time and increases accuracy and it definitely works well.
Currently, AGPO’s quality team uses HQV at storage receiving facilities before fruit is moved into CA rooms. They scan approximately 10% of their 12,000 bins coming into storage. This provides an accurate assessment of the size of the unsorted harvested fruit. Previously the size sampling process involved taking a 100 apple random sample from each delivery and sizing them all by hand using calipers. This manual process took a lot of time and was often not a large enough sample size to provide an accurate representation of the lot. With HQV, AGPO can size 100+ apples with a single 10-second scan.
As with most of our UK and EU Harvest Quality Vision customers, AGPO looks at the millimeter diameter measurement to make decisions about the pack-out potential of their apples and pears. This allows them to account for differences in density across varieties and not have to readjust their size classes to match different pack line weight classifications. HQV fully replaces and boosts their manual size sampling process allowing the AGPO marketing team to make decisions about the received lots of fruit to group together for optimized pack lots. Combining HQV size data with their storage inventory tracking system enables AGPO to most efficiently organize which CA rooms should be opened next to best match incoming sales orders.
The AGPO marketing team can see the actual size profile of the stored apples so when we get a promotion that they need a certain size they can pull it from our stores because they know what's in there.
As the growing members of AGPO have become more familiar with Croptracker and can see the financial benefits from the marketing team's more informed inventory management, the call for sampling at more locations has led to increased scanning by the AGPO team. Additionally, the group plans to start exploring even more visibility into their inventory and cost tracking with Croptracker’s ERP modules, including Harvest and Storage. Croptacker is committed to working with our customers at their pace and developing workflows and information sharing to grow with them.
Speaking with Simon has made clear the signifigant value Croptracker's Harvest Quality Vision (HQV) brings to Avalon Growers Producer Organization's operations. By streamlining the size assessment process and enhancing inventory management, AGPO has been able to optimize their marketing and sales efforts, leading to increased efficiency and financial benefits for their grower members. AGPO’s commitment to innovation and collaboration ensures that they remain prepared to meet the challenges of a competitive market for Apples and Pears in the UK. Croptracker is proud to be able to support their growth with our software.
