NEWSROOM
Harvesting success: Hectre’s fruitful journey in AgTech
8 February 2024
It’s been a fruitful (pun intended) few years for agritech entrepreneur Matty Blomfield. Momentum continues to build at pace for Hectre, the orchard management software company he founded with Menilik Dyer and Nico Gabarra in 2017; over the last few years the start-up has rapidly grown into what Blomfield describes as “an AI company for the fresh produce industry”, developing a suite of innovative new products, expanding its reach across the globe and winning its categories for three years running at the annual AgTech Breakthrough Awards. Most recently, the company secured a substantial investment from deep-tech venture capital investor Nuance Connected Capital, signifying clear confirmation of Hectre’s huge future potential and marking an important milestone in the company’s continued evolution.
It’s the perfect time, therefore, to revisit this entrepreneurial success story. And although the initial concept behind Hectre – leveraging AI technology to help growers manage key data across every aspect of their orchards, from assessing fruit size and colour to estimating crop yields – remains the same, the company “has changed a lot,” observes Blomfield. “In the beginning we were focused on the apple and pear industry, and while we still have a big focus on those crops, now we’re working with cherries, citrus, stone fruit and onions, with more on the horizon. We have also expanded geographically and are now in 14 countries.”
In terms of customer growth, the last few years have seen Hectre transition from working initially only with growers to “being vertically integrated across the supply chain”, explains Blomfield. “We have started working with the post-harvest operators as well as the packers, the storage operators, the sales desk that sells the fruit on to the retailer – over time, we’re building relationships all the way through to the retailer.”
Product innovation remains a key driver of Hectre’s ongoing success; in the past year alone, the company has released more than 140 product features and enhancements. “We’re one of the leaders in using computer vision and AI to detect fruit quality,” notes Blomfield. Their latest innovation, Hectre Top Down, builds on the ingenious fruit-sizing technology the company developed for the industry. Although this technology proved to be a game-changer for packers – offering them the ability to collate data on fruit size and colour with one click of a mobile device – Blomfield and his colleagues soon recognised the need to enhance its capabilities. “As we started to scale up and work with larger organisations, the need for ‘industrialisation’ of the solution started to happen – it needed to be capable of solving the same problem for organisations that have 10,000 truckloads of 40-plus bins coming through each harvest season,” he explains.
An initial solution involved using a GoPro camera to scan the top layer of a fruit-laden truck, but this too had limitations. So, in true entrepreneurial fashion, they went back to the drawing board, sourcing industrialised cameras that they could acquire “off the shelf” and building machine-learning and detection models on top of these. The result was Hectre Top Down, a ground-breaking tool which detects and sizes fruit straight off the truck, delivering massive and highly accurate size samples within seconds. “It’s gone really, really well,” observes Blomfield. “This has become Hectre’s vision product.”
It also caught the attention of deep-tech investor Nuance Connected Capital. Attracted to Hectre’s vision of leveraging leading-edge tech to provide better outcomes for the global fruit industry, and convinced by their proven track record of success, Nuance subsequently led a NZ$5m convertible note investment in the company. The type of investment was significant, notes Blomfield, as a convertible note gives Hectre the space to continue its transition from being completely reliant on direct sales toward a product-led growth phase for the company. “When you know that your next step is really compelling, a convertible note gives you time to let that play out,” says Blomfield. “We’re very, very pleased to have Nuance come on board, because they’ve been incredible to work with.” While Hectre already boasts a customer base which ranges from local family growers to some of the leading horticultural companies in the world, Nuance’s investment will enable the company to expand further into the lucrative European, North American and South American markets.
Making a meaningful impact on an issue of increasing global significance – food security – may seem a long way now from his BA/BCom degree at the University of Auckland, but Blomfield credits the University environment with igniting his own entrepreneurial spark. “It was a space and time that enabled connections and facilitated opportunities,” he remembers. And his biggest lesson along the way? How to become a good judge of character, he suggests. “The impact of that is so big. As a start-up you have different needs at different stages, then you need to be able to really understand people when you’re meeting them – how they’re going to help fill in the gaps and contribute what the company needs.”
With Nuance’s generous funding boost accelerating the company’s ambitious business goals, a variety of exciting new products in the pipeline and further global expansion on the horizon, 2024 is looking pretty healthy for Hectre. “This year we’re really excited because we have a number of different solutions that will become available to more small to medium growers globally. We’re going to start really impacting many more growers around the world than we are today,” enthuses Blomfield. “We’re very excited for Hectre’s future. Because we have our customers ramp up over time, we have a lot of growth built in. We’re already set to be a top performing SaaS company in 2024.”
8 February 2024
It’s been a fruitful (pun intended) few years for agritech entrepreneur Matty Blomfield. Momentum continues to build at pace for Hectre, the orchard management software company he founded with Menilik Dyer and Nico Gabarra in 2017; over the last few years the start-up has rapidly grown into what Blomfield describes as “an AI company for the fresh produce industry”, developing a suite of innovative new products, expanding its reach across the globe and winning its categories for three years running at the annual AgTech Breakthrough Awards. Most recently, the company secured a substantial investment from deep-tech venture capital investor Nuance Connected Capital, signifying clear confirmation of Hectre’s huge future potential and marking an important milestone in the company’s continued evolution.
It’s the perfect time, therefore, to revisit this entrepreneurial success story. And although the initial concept behind Hectre – leveraging AI technology to help growers manage key data across every aspect of their orchards, from assessing fruit size and colour to estimating crop yields – remains the same, the company “has changed a lot,” observes Blomfield. “In the beginning we were focused on the apple and pear industry, and while we still have a big focus on those crops, now we’re working with cherries, citrus, stone fruit and onions, with more on the horizon. We have also expanded geographically and are now in 14 countries.”
In terms of customer growth, the last few years have seen Hectre transition from working initially only with growers to “being vertically integrated across the supply chain”, explains Blomfield. “We have started working with the post-harvest operators as well as the packers, the storage operators, the sales desk that sells the fruit on to the retailer – over time, we’re building relationships all the way through to the retailer.”
Product innovation remains a key driver of Hectre’s ongoing success; in the past year alone, the company has released more than 140 product features and enhancements. “We’re one of the leaders in using computer vision and AI to detect fruit quality,” notes Blomfield. Their latest innovation, Hectre Top Down, builds on the ingenious fruit-sizing technology the company developed for the industry. Although this technology proved to be a game-changer for packers – offering them the ability to collate data on fruit size and colour with one click of a mobile device – Blomfield and his colleagues soon recognised the need to enhance its capabilities. “As we started to scale up and work with larger organisations, the need for ‘industrialisation’ of the solution started to happen – it needed to be capable of solving the same problem for organisations that have 10,000 truckloads of 40-plus bins coming through each harvest season,” he explains.
An initial solution involved using a GoPro camera to scan the top layer of a fruit-laden truck, but this too had limitations. So, in true entrepreneurial fashion, they went back to the drawing board, sourcing industrialised cameras that they could acquire “off the shelf” and building machine-learning and detection models on top of these. The result was Hectre Top Down, a ground-breaking tool which detects and sizes fruit straight off the truck, delivering massive and highly accurate size samples within seconds. “It’s gone really, really well,” observes Blomfield. “This has become Hectre’s vision product.”
It also caught the attention of deep-tech investor Nuance Connected Capital. Attracted to Hectre’s vision of leveraging leading-edge tech to provide better outcomes for the global fruit industry, and convinced by their proven track record of success, Nuance subsequently led a NZ$5m convertible note investment in the company. The type of investment was significant, notes Blomfield, as a convertible note gives Hectre the space to continue its transition from being completely reliant on direct sales toward a product-led growth phase for the company. “When you know that your next step is really compelling, a convertible note gives you time to let that play out,” says Blomfield. “We’re very, very pleased to have Nuance come on board, because they’ve been incredible to work with.” While Hectre already boasts a customer base which ranges from local family growers to some of the leading horticultural companies in the world, Nuance’s investment will enable the company to expand further into the lucrative European, North American and South American markets.
Making a meaningful impact on an issue of increasing global significance – food security – may seem a long way now from his BA/BCom degree at the University of Auckland, but Blomfield credits the University environment with igniting his own entrepreneurial spark. “It was a space and time that enabled connections and facilitated opportunities,” he remembers. And his biggest lesson along the way? How to become a good judge of character, he suggests. “The impact of that is so big. As a start-up you have different needs at different stages, then you need to be able to really understand people when you’re meeting them – how they’re going to help fill in the gaps and contribute what the company needs.”
With Nuance’s generous funding boost accelerating the company’s ambitious business goals, a variety of exciting new products in the pipeline and further global expansion on the horizon, 2024 is looking pretty healthy for Hectre. “This year we’re really excited because we have a number of different solutions that will become available to more small to medium growers globally. We’re going to start really impacting many more growers around the world than we are today,” enthuses Blomfield. “We’re very excited for Hectre’s future. Because we have our customers ramp up over time, we have a lot of growth built in. We’re already set to be a top performing SaaS company in 2024.”
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