How Sage Fruit gained a massive increase in their early fruit size sampling using Spectre Top Down

Fruit Types

Apples, Pears, Cherries & Stonefruit

SIZE

8,333 acres / 3,373 hectares

Using Hectre App

Since April 2021

Modules In Use

How prominent sales and marketing company Sage Fruit gained further efficiencies with a massive increase in their early fruit size sampling using Spectre Top Down.

Better planning. Improved pack per bin. Reduced waste. A faster, more efficient pack.

Sage Fruit is a leading apple, pear, cherry, and stone fruit sales and marketing company based in Yakima, Washington. They are owned by five partner grower and packer operations, Legacy Fruit, Olympic Fruit, Valicoff Fruit, Congdon Orchards and Chelan Fruit. Growers for Sage Fruit farm several thousand acres of orchards throughout Washington and parts of Oregon.

Sage Fruit is dedicated to providing top-tier customer service and fruit of exceptional quality, always looking to go the extra mile for its growers, packhouses, and customers. They employ numerous horticultural specialists and quality control personnel to ensure they deliver high-quality, fresh produce, year-round, to their customers throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe, and Asia.

We sat down with Sage Fruit’s Shane McKinley, Director of Quality Control, and Nicole Gordy, Director of Business Analytics, to discuss the impact that Spectre and Spectre Top Down have had on their business.

Why Did Sage Fruit Select Hectre as a Technology Partner?

Sage Fruit is always looking for new technologies to help us improve our processes and to enhance what we do. When we were approached about Spectre, we were immediately excited about the possibilities. However, it was in its very early stages, so we didn’t really know if it would come to fruition fully the way we hoped it would.

Since those early days, the Hectre team has built upon what they started with, to deliver the product that we envisioned from the start. It’s been an enjoyable process, working closely with the Hectre team, providing feedback, and fine-tuning Spectre for our specific needs.

Hectre’s willingness and ability to pivot speaks volumes.

When looking at new technologies, we are looking for a partner to work with us to create something that works well and solves a problem. Some companies with new technology are extremely proud of what they have done and do not want to pivot from that.

Hectre’s willingness and ability to pivot is one of the main reasons the relationship between Sage Fruit and Hectre has worked out so well. It really speaks volumes for Hectre, and the end result is that we have a very strong relationship and a product we are extremely excited about.

The Benefits Spectre Brings To Our Business

The extremely fast pace we work at means finding time for traditional manual size sampling was very challenging. Before having Hectre’s Spectre technology, we would do a receiving sample of 25 apples per truckload. We would look at that small sample of data and set up the packing line accordingly. If the fruit profile ended up being something completely different, we would be left with the wrong setup and a less efficient run.

We’ve gone from sampling 25 apples per truckload, to sampling 6,000 apples or more with Spectre.

Now that we have Spectre, we have gone from sampling 25 apples per truckload to sampling 6000 apples or more. Our goal this past season was to scan at least 80% of the trucks that come through receiving. Thanks to our focus and our great team, we exceeded that goal, so Spectre’s impact has been huge for us.

More Efficient Packing Runs

Spectre helps us plan and reduce detrimental effects on the packing line, which is extremely beneficial to our warehouses. It allows us to go, okay, I’m going to have a 100-bin run of this size, and then I’m going to reduce the size or put the order from largest to smallest or from highest grade to lowest grade. You also have the ability to control the schedule based on your marketing orders.

Spectre’s accurate size profile information is extremely beneficial to our warehouses. With Spectre, our packing line can run at full speed.

Warehouse downtime reduces when drastic changes in fruit size don’t occur within a production run. Within an 8-hour run, you might have as many as seven different growers, and if you don’t have an accurate understanding of the size, you can find yourself jumping from largest to smallest and back to largest, etc.

Every change on the packing line requires a movement of materials and labor to make the changes, which means we are not running at full speed. So having accurate size profile information ensures we don’t end up with a reduction in throughput.

Better Planning & Reduced Waste

There are a lot of savings in having the right materials available to you at the right time. Understanding the fruit sizes and quality you are going to be packing is instrumental to knowing which packaging materials you need to have available.

With Spectre, we have an enhanced understanding of our inventory before we pack it, which allows us to plan better. And not just to avoid repacking, losing fruit, or missing customer orders but also to reduce packaging waste.

Reducing packaging waste is yet another way we can improve our growers’ pack per bin to return more money to them for their fruit, which is always our goal at Sage Fruit.

How Did Your Teams Respond to Using Spectre?

In the first year, some technological challenges meant we had to work hard to ensure Spectre was being used. However, this year, things went much smoother. We’re in a really good spot now, with fantastic teams in place at all of our warehouses, and from what I’ve heard, they really enjoy using Spectre now.

We appealed to their competitive side and our warehouse staff have responded extremely well.

One method we use to get our warehouse teams on board with using Spectre is appealing to their competitive side. For example, every day, we email the warehouses with the percentage of captures they have successfully added. And at the backend, we have conversations like, “Hey, I noticed your neighboring warehouse beat you by a couple of percentage points! How do we get that number up today?”

It’s not easy when you are balancing a lot of things and have trucks lined up down the road, but our warehouse staff have responded extremely well. They monitor those KPIs just like we do and have become rerally good at realizing when they are falling behind and need to pick up the pace. A little friendly competition goes a long way!

What Benefits Has Spectre Brought to the Sales and Marketing Side of the Business?

We can optimize our run schedules to fulfill customer demand.

On the sales and marketing side, Spectre has made it a lot easier to match the fruit we have, to what the customer demand is, and to optimize our run schedules accordingly.

It has meant we have greater capability to ensure we run the right fruit at the right time to fulfill the demand and ensure we hit the numbers for a customer’s order in time.

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