27. Escavox in the Australian cherry industry

Uh, a lot of loggers will tell you what happened.

We help to explain why it happened and what you can do next.

Yep.

Uh, collecting data is the easy part.

The value really comes from understanding it and using it to improve your outcomes.

Um-

Mm

...

so we, we provide not just the real-time data, but then we use it to provide growers with analytics and reporting that helps them to understand not just what's happening in one shipment, but what's happening across their entire supply chain over time.

Uh, we work, we also work closely with organizations like CSIRO and industry bodies to develop other tools like CoreTrack, shelf life algorithms, and, uh, condensation risk models.

So we're not just interested in collecting more data, we're interested in helping growers strengthen their supply chains by getting more out of the data that they receive.

And I guess having all those different opportunities to the- ask the question why, particularly at different points on the supply chain, I can see for cherries, as we are very highly perishable, there are different pain points across the supply chain where we can, you know, see a reduction in quality, and maybe that's some of those questions where we can ask why.

From your perspective, what are the biggest risks to quality once fruit has left the orchard and, and how do these different points where you've just mentioned, how do they minimize the effect on quality?

Yeah.

So we all know cherries are such a highly perishable fruit, and they can be very unforgiving when it comes to temperature management.

We commonly see temperature excursions, delays in the supply chain, breaks in the cold chain, and condensation risks, uh, all affecting the quality of a cherry.

Uh, one of the biggest challenges with cherries that we see is that once the fruit has warmed up or there's been a break in the cold chain, it can be very difficult to bring that temperature back down again.

A lot of people assume that if fruit gets warm in transit, the truck or container will simply cool it back down.

In reality, transport is much better at maintaining temperature than it is at removing heat from a load, and once that temperature starts getting away from you, quality can decline very quickly.

Uh, that's why we find that pre-cooling is so important.

Uh, in many cases, the best opportunity to remove heat from the fruit is before it even leaves the farm.

Um, we've worked with growers who have used our data to review their cooling practices and make changes that significantly improve outcomes.

Uh, an example, uh, we had a grower in Tasmania.

Uh, they found that through monitoring, their fruit wasn't actually getting down to temperature before leaving their facility, and it wasn't cooling effectively in transit.

So they reviewed the data and decided to add an additional day of pre-cooling before dispatch.