You Can't Stop Innovation

Author: Kate Cook

We may not have flying cars and jetpacks yet, but the fresh produce industry is continually moving forward and coming up with amazing new uses of produce and new tech to keep us well and truly in the modern age.

One of the great things about industry conferences is that every company is there to show off, and that brings about great displays of the latest tech and innovations on the market or even yet to be released. At Hort Connections in 2019 this was evident even on the tradeshow floor, where you could find tech from the latest fruit and vegetable packing solutions to specially designed drones which are sure to become a grower’s best friend.

The buzz piece of innovation from the tradeshow was from Hort Innovation, who wowed the delegates once again with their cauliflower lattes that contained 7 grams of cauliflower powder which is equivalent to one serve of veggies. The Hort Innovation team may be seen to be firing out of the same gun as last year’s coffee invention, the broccoli latte, but who can complain when their cauliflower latte was a step in the right direction as taste testers saw this as a “creamier” option.

During the sessions we saw the introduction of new tech as well as new ways of thinking. Black.ai Co-founder and CEO Keaton Okkonen spoke to delegates about prioritising their shoppers experience by making their checkout systems easier. Okkonen and Black.ai have been working with major retailers in Australia to get around this issue, and they are focusing on the next step past our current self-serve options to make this process even easier. Currently Black.ai are working with 3D sensors that are mounted throughout stores, these sensors “map out the space, detect what’s happening, where the people are, what they are doing… and track those over time to track pick-up gestures and behaviours. Taking this approach, it’s customer-centric, not object-centric, and means we don’t need tags, shelf-weights, and overpackaging”.

With consistent innovations in how we grow produce, how we shop for it, and what we do with it, the sky is the limit with where our industry can go, which is a great sign for Australian Horticulture and those involved with it.