Companies that deal in fresh produce and are looking for more advanced quality control of their fruits and vegetables throughout the supply chain might want to check out Clarifruit’s mobile-friendly platform.
By simply taking a photo from a smartphone of their product, Clarifruit’s intuitive app can then autogenerate a report with data for more refined inspections and analysis. Officials say it can provide both reassurance and times savings for marketing teams, wholesalers, retailers and distribution centres.
“Clarifruit has built the only end-to-end automatic QC platform in the market, offering both automated, mobile data collection for the QC inspector as well as QC analytics for the sales and operational departments”, CEO Avi Schwartzer said. “Additional key differentiators are our proprietary technologies, including a patent-protected, deep-learning computer-vision engine as well as a rating algorithm that leverages an ever-growing database of produce photos and attributes.”
Clarifrut leaders say its platform can produce quality reports on nearly a dozen different categories, including apples, bananas, blueberries, cherries, grapes, lemons, mangoes, melons, oranges, peaches pineapples and plums as well as easy-peelers. More items may be added in the future as the business grows.
The cloud-based startup from Israel which had been in the works for several years, received a £4.5 million infusion prior to the pandemic, including a nearly £1.9 million investment from the European Innovation Council Accelerator.
So how does is work?
After downloading the Clarifrut app, users can take a picture that they want analyzed. That photo then goes through a process aided by “computer-vision technology” that assesses its surface, size, stem, colour and imperfections. Those photos are then compared against Clarifruit’s Big Data library which contains millions of produce images. Clarifruit says “this information can be configured ahead of time to take the inspection type and your specific list of inspected attributes into account.”
As for getting beyond the skin or peel to the heart of the product, Clarifruit says its platform can be configured to work with any ERP solution and “intelligent integrations with third-party hardware devices” to provide more defined qualities such as Brix or firmness.
Users can track their products and reports and get real-time information through the app and their own management dashboard. That dashboard contains data on each inspection, include date, time and location. Reports can be uploaded and converted into Excel spreadsheet if users desire.
Among the applications Clarifruit supports are pre-harvest and final products, inbound and outbound distribution centers, coolers, intake, and front of stores.
The goal is to take out subjectiveness of reporting and provide more consistent and reliable information that be used internally or to others in the supply chain.
Among the companies already leveraging Clarifruit are Dole, Mucci Farms, Purafruit and Gesex.
