AI has potential to be game changer for fruit supply chain, say distributors

At London’s annual International Food and Drink Event today (25 March), Fruitnet managing director Mike Knowles and leaders at Dole UK, Worldwide Fruit and quality control service Clarifruit explored the potential impact the technology could have on the produce sector.

The companies said common challenges in the supplier to retailer to consumer supply chain, such as quality grading of produce, could be made more efficient and faster through increased accuracy of AI tech.

Worldwide Fruit head of technical Willie Wood pointed out other ongoing challenges affecting the perishability of products – such as climate change, unpredictable weather and shipping delays – where the lack of artificial intelligence has led to “financial missed opportunities”.

Dole UK technical and business development director Drew Reynolds said: “The challenge is to get a natural product in nature made that is very variable in the field, and turn it into a consistent product. Our consumers and our customers believe they need those manual processes.

“But quality control procedures in this country have probably stagnated for the past 15 years, we’ve been doing the same things for so long. Artificial intelligence, I believe, has got such a tremendous opportunity.”

Reynolds also said that future technology could see AI assist with not only weeding out potential external defects, but taking a closer look inside the product to get a “much bigger and better estimate”. This would particularly be useful for pre-prepared fruits, where in the past it has been “incredibly difficult” as each individual fruit would have to be examined and disrupted.

Clarifruit CEO and founder Elad Mardix added that such technology, which his company has already begun to incorporate, would remove the manual and “subjectivity out of the growing process”.

Grocery Gazette