Pear Industry To Gain Benefits Of Innovative Tech

Hectre is excited to be working with leading pear growers and packers as Hectre prepares to release its latest Spectre product innovation, Spectre for Peras.

Similar to other Spectre products, Spectre for Pears will mean pear productores y packers can gain a quick and highly-accurate indication of fruit size distribution simply by taking a photo of a bin of pears with an iPhone, iPad, or Hectre’s world-leading “Top Down” technology.

The tech allows growers and packers to identify the size distribution of the fruit as soon as it’s picked in the orchard, or as it arrives at the packhouse.

Soon Hectre’s pear customers will be able to gain the same valuable large size samples as apple growers and packers from around the world have been experiencing.

Bringing Innovation To The Global Stage

Hectre CEO and Co-founder, Matty Blomfield described Spectre for Pears as “absolutely massive” for pear growers and packers looking for quick and accurate mobile pear-sizing tech to support their success.

 

“We’re super excited to deliver this latest Spectre innovation, Spectre for Pears. We’ve got an incredibly talented team of engineers working on the Spectre for Pears project, which will potentially mean huge cost and time savings for our customers,” said Blomfield.

 

Spectre is used globally at major apple, citrus, and cherry orchards and packhouses, such as Sage Fruit, Monson Fruit, and First Fresh New Zealand. With Spectre for Pears, pear growers and packhouses will also be able to reap the benefits of the leading-edge tech.

Collaboration and Talent

Innovative US fruit leader Sage Fruit, and highly respected NZ grower RJ Flowers Ltd, have been providing valuable industry collaboration throughout the Spectre for Pears development process. Hectre has continually worked closely with industry for every new solution they have brought to market, ensuring the technology is highly relevant, pragmatic and valuable and continuing with its brand focus of simple to use.

Hectre’s Head of Research and Development, Luke Butters, praised the talent and dedication of Hectre’s Spectre R & D team. Currently, the team are focused on optimizing Spectre’s accuracy even further for different pear varieties. 

According to Butters, the most significant challenge with teaching Spectre to accurately size pears, has been the fruit’s shape. “The shape of pears is quite different to other fruit Spectre has been sizing to date. Our team has relished the challenge of creating more complex algorithms to address the challenge.”

“We have a really strong relationship with Hectre. We’re really open about what we need, and part of Hectre’s success is that they are great at listening.”

 

Shane McKinley
Director of Quality Control, Sage Fruit

Real-Time Valuable Benefits

Hectre’s Spectre mobile early fruit-sizing app delivers real-time data, making it easy to adjust operations where needed, enabling growers and packers to make better storage, packing, and sales decisions.

 

Sales teams gain greater certainty around the size of the fruit available to sell, and packhouses can reduce costs, through reductions in pack line stoppages caused by the wrong-sized fruit being selected for the pack.

 

The innovative tech uses machine learning and computer vision AI to detect and size pears from the top layer of the bin. The results are delivered within seconds to customers’ devices and can also be shared through reports, or integrated into internal data systems using Hectre’s API.

More than 27 million pieces of fruit, including apples, oranges, cherries, lemons, and mandarins have now been sized by Spectre to date. These massive proprietary data sets, provide Hectre with a highly competitive advantage in the market and greater value for their customers.

The Market

The global pear export market is worth an estimated 2.7 billion dollars (USD), with global production of around 23.5 million tons.

In recent months, Spectre has been showcased at global industry events, such as Apple & Pear Australia’s Orchard Tour, the Citrus NZ Conference and now the Great Lakes Expo in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Spectre for Pears announcement comes off the back of a phenomenal year for Hectre, which saw them win for the second year in a row at the global AgTech Breakthrough Awards and launch Spectre Top Down as well as Spectre for Cherries. In 2023 Hectre will offer a Series A investment round.

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