Apple robot up for angel investment

A Tauranga company is ready to take its apple packing robotics offshore and help remove the headache of finding staff to do mundane work.

The automated apple packing machines place apples in trays ‘‘colour up’’ with the stems aligned, using sensors, software and electromechanical technology, and are expected to remove some of the monotonous work that apple packhouses find difficult to staff.

Robotics Plus has five automated packers operating in Nelson and has plans to enter the United States and other markets. Most of the funding so far has been provided by serial investor Steve Saunders who is chairman and founder of the company which makes other robotic products.

The company’s co-founder Dr Alistair Scarfe pitched the potential of the company to angel investors at the Agribusiness Investment Showcase run by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. The company already has about 30 per cent of the multi million dollar injection needed to take the innovation to the next level and is considering bringing in commercial partners. Commercial trials of the Nelson packers sorted 8.5 million apples and numbers will increase with all of them operating now. Scarfe said the bruise-free robotic packers were ready to be taken to the market and they had proven themselves at a Nelson packhouse as being faster, more accurate and hygienic and by removing a repetitive and mundane task for workers.

Saunders said the company could go it alone commercially, but was open to the idea of bringing in the right partners as he was an angel investor himself. He said the technology was addressing a serious labour issue in packhouses which had expensive staffing costs and were finding it it difficult to employ staff.