Introducing Produsense

The solution that promises to bring the food and agricultural supply chain into the 21st century

THE FOOD AND AGRICULTURE SUPPLY CHAIN has long been characterised by wastage and inefficiency at every transition point in production, transport and delivery.

Today, it is still a relatively low-tech industry in many parts of the chain; the storage, haulage, distribution and retail stages.

That is until now.

Introducing Produsense – the solution that promises to bring the food and agriculture supply chain into the 21st century.

From farm to plate, data driven track and traceability to improve efficiencies through the entire supply chain…

Produsense – a Joint Venture of experience and vision

Produsense is a joint venture with Foresense Technologies.

Adam Leslie is CEO and Founding Director of Produsense.

Hailing from a farming background, Adam has extensive contacts and experience in all aspects of fresh produce – from retail dealings with Coles, Woolworths and Aldi, right through to exporting into Asia and The Middle East.

Following years of experience as a buyer for BILO (Coles), Adam successfully set up the imports division of a large global supplier and built it up to well in excess of $150m of imported fresh produce.

INTRODUCING PRODUSENSE: The solution that promises to bring the food and agricultural supply chain into the 21st century.

Adam also founded Fresh Solutions Group, a $55M fruit importing business.

The company recently acquired an export produce company with revenue circa $40m introducing opportunities with new global business partners and the development of a purpose-built customs quarantine facility with revenue of $4M in the first 18 months.

Foresense Technologies, founded by Glenn Weiland, is an industry leader in presence detection technology and AI data analytics and monitoring systems with applications across government, industry and commerce.

Glenn is an experienced CEO and management professional of 35 years with wide-ranging experience in technology and communications.

Current Foresense clients and partners include Australian Lotteries and Newsagency Association (4000 locations).

Foresense Analytics has also started the roll out of phase one of 10,000sensors for oOH Media, Australasia’s largest out-of-home media company.

The food supply chain and the inefficiencies of the past

From farm and processing plants to distribution and consumption todays retail food chain is multifaceted.

And when we talk about perishables traceability, food safety and the management of the entire cold chain is paramount.

Current procedures leave many open opportunities for cross contamination of dangerous pathogens such as listeria or salmonella throughout the journey from farm to plate if stringent procedures falter at any single point in time.

In fact, significant parts of these critical processes are often guided by aged, outdated and inadequate systems.

This is endemic throughout all perishables industries including fresh produce, meat, poultry, seafood and dairy.

Food spoiling and wastage is a major global issue where many have only limited access to fresh food and there are 870 million people today who are undernourished.

Globally every year 1.6 billion tons of food go to waste, representing a value of $1.2 trillion.

Opportunities for change

With food so integral to our very being and with a global market of $58 billion the potential in food supply and logistics is massive.

The buzz-sectors in recent years have largely been limited to consumer internet and financial technology industries.

Astute commentators view agricultural technology as the most critical technology that needs high levels of investment over the next 20 years to ensure desired outcomes in research and development to fast-track implementation.

This is born of the fact that the global need for food has reached a critical point in history.

Put simply, by 2050 there will be 9.7 billion people on the Earth.

At current production levels with current production and distribution methods a mass food shortage is looming.

With current limits on global transport mobility, COVID-19 has only served to exacerbate this.

Efficiency at all stages – from farm to plate – must increase.

And fast.

Industry figures suggest farms, manufacturers and consumer-facing businesses combined contribute 58% of all food wastage.

At the farm improving yields and reducing wastage has always been an elusive objective.

In transport, stock traceability and monitoring can limit delays and mitigate loss of produce due to spoiling.

Food retailers must prefer suppliers who provide the freshest perishables possible to minimise their own stock wastage.

Each link in the food and agriculture supply chain to a certain extent depends on the best possible practices of the previous link to ensure the end-of-chain shelf life is maximised as much as possible.

The Produsense solution

Produsense is poised to make key parts of the retail food chain safer and more efficient through innovative proprietary sensor technology.

Produsense sensors are integrated into all stages of commercial food production, processing and distribution, automating logging and monitoring to streamline procedures and improve safety.

Combined with a proprietary AI software platform, a highly detailed data set of how, when, and where stock is at any point in time can be easily accessed.

Over time, aggregated trends are analysed to identify areas for improvement and increased efficiencies.

All stock activity is electronically recorded to track and trace the journey from farm to plate.

At the farm, trace livestock and crop development and movement to capture real time inefficiencies to reduce time to harvest.

During transport, accurately log inventory count, package tracking and unique user data for who is handling stock at any point in time.

The sensors specifically log temperature control dynamics including open/shut time of transport packaging and ambient air temperature to log any food safety issues and raise alerts where possible contamination may occur – or has occurred.

With the many stages and many different peoples involvement in the processing and distribution phase of foods many opportunities for human error and mistakes arise.

If any part of the chain fails the ultimate shelf-life of any perishable product can be greatly diminished.

Produsense addresses many of these potential failures to keep food fresher and safer in transport, with higher yields at the farm.

It allows farmers to ensure the highest quality of produce at the outset of the food chain journey, the transport and logistics phase to be carefully monitored, and the end retailer to have the confidence of the highest possible quality for the customers table.

For food in the 21st Century, Produsense makes the most sense.