The rapid adoption of Clarifruit's AI powered mobile fruit quality inspection solution by a growing worldwide customer list, attest to the 'power' of their solution. This includes the biggest produce brands in the key growing and export regions worldwide. Elad Mardix, CEO of Clarifruit says, "We were able to close the biggest brands, representing diversified produce in four different continents, and we have global presence across North and South America as well as EMEA. Some of our tier-1 customers include T&G, Zespri, Dole Diversified and Mucci Farms, to whom Clarifruit power their QC operations globally."
As a company that is rapidly advancing in the global fresh produce industry, it has allowed Clarifruit to gain unique insights that a lot of other companies lack. "We operate in all key fresh produce markets, including North America and Latin America. We have teams on both continents. We work with the largest players in Europe, and currently have a focus in the UK," states Mardix.
In standardizing quality across the supply chain, Clarifruit customers significantly reduce produce waste. "We built our software that really addresses these issues. We are seeing data from earlier customers such as Dole Sunshine and Zespri who have extensively deployed Clarifruit into their operations over the last two years. The data on rejections reduction is very significant as they achieve high double-digit percentage savings with Clarifruit compared to previous years and older, manual methods of inspection. Zespri has seen 25% cost savings - per Dave Scullin from Zespri's recent PR announcements. This year, the highest quality of kiwi fruit was seen in the global market. We see from customers that we're able to give them the highest consistency of quality that they can deliver to their customers, due to the standardisation of QC along their supply chain. They have consistency, it reduces rejections when they supply their shipments, and it results in a premium brand that they can present to their customers," explains Mardix.
He says they are also very strong in the Pacific region, while they already have a number of customers in South Africa too. "We work with true global players in this industry. We are very big in the Pacific, where we work with Dole Sunshine. We work with the largest fresh produce exporters in each one of the key continents."
The company has lofty and multiple goals, with a drive to reach some of them as soon as the end of 2024. "As we've already met great success with wholesalers, the majority of our current focus is expanding downstream into commercial retailers. Clarifruit will be used in DC's and later in the front of stores, to create one common language to evaluate quality across the fresh produce value chain," states Mardix.
Prospects for 2025
Having already achieved so much, Mardix says in the next couple of seasons the most exciting developments are still ahead. "In the next 12 months, we will have Level 3, which is Clarifruit's automatic defect identification. Not surprising, defects are still inspected manually, so we are in the process of developing a way to automatically detect them. We started a year ago with citrus, and expect to release it commercially in 2025."
He says the Australian Government's recent investment into Clarifruit shows the growing confidence in their solution. "It flags the importance of our solutions for not just growers, but the entire fresh produce industry. This program will allow us to work with berry and table grapes growers in speeding up our development of Level 3. We're excited to work with Australian growers and marketing companies to bring it to the market," concludes Mardix.
Visit Clarifruit at IFPA in Atlanta
Click here to schedule an in-person meeting with the Clarifruit team at the IFPA Global Produce show at their booth #C1227.
For more information:
Talia Zimmerman
Clarifruit
[email protected]
www.clarifruit.com