Compac, part of the TOMRA Food family, has won the 2020 NZ Hi-Tech Award for Most Innovative Agritech Solution. This accolade recognizes the innovative technology and customer benefits of UltraView, the groundbreaking inspection module launched by Compac in late 2019.
The annual New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards celebrate excellence within New Zealand’s hi-tech industry, which is now the nation’s third-largest export earner and fastest-growing export sector. This year’s Awards gathering was held virtually because of COVID-19, with a huge audience coming together remotely on the evening of 21 August via a livestream. The Awards’ 70 judges, from New Zealand and many other nations, said the caliber of this year’s entries was at an all-time high.
Detecting difficult-to-find defects in fresh produce
UltraView maximizes the performance of Compac’s Spectrim, the world’s most powerful grading platform for fresh fruit and vegetables. UltraView’s unique advantage is its ability to reliably find defects in fresh produce which would otherwise be difficult or impossible to detect because of their shape and/or location.
The UltraView module contains a dedicated set of high-resolution multi-spectral (color and infrared) cameras and LED lights which are located ideally close to the fruit, parallel to its direction of travel. In this unique position, the UltraView cameras generate superior-quality images for accurate inspection of the fruit’s stem bowl and tip regions.
Nigel Beach, VP and Head of Research and Development at Compac’s headquarters in Onehunga, Auckland, commented: “It is exhilarating to see Compac recognized on a platform as prestigious as the Hi-Tech Awards. Innovation is in our DNA and I am excited to be part of a team that continues to help shape the future of the agritech industry both in New Zealand and on the world stage. Congratulations to everyone who worked on the UltraView project – this award is recognition of your hard work and dedication and you should be very proud of what you have achieved.
“Compac’s customers operate in a high-pressure business in which fruit picking-and-sorting seasons can be very short, demanding a huge amount of work to be accomplished quickly. This requires sophisticated and robust sorting technologies. Compac’s solutions provide this, ensuring that produce is accurately graded and safety-assured at the same time as minimizing food waste and maximizing producers’ yields.”
