AI advances in food production

The growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the food and agriculture sector. Frank Barillaro, Partner, explains how AI is enabling automation and robotics within food production, where AI-driven systems learn and improve task efficiency. Frank highlights an example from one of our portfolio companies, where AI-powered packing equipment optimises packing rates. The adoption of AI signals a promising future for agriculture.

Brad Mytton: All the talk is about artificial intelligence globally. What are we seeing in relation to some of our food producers around AI and what are the initiatives that are being evaluated?

Frank Barillaro: You touched on it earlier around some of the initiatives we've been undertaking with CapEx investment to reduce costs. And one of the key things we've been seeing is fast forwarding some of those CapEx investment decisions to reduce costs where the payback periods might make greater sense. And I think this higher cost environment has allowed us to implement a lot of those CapEx initiatives.

One of the amazing things which I've recently seen is some of the artificial intelligence adoption that we're creating within our glasshouse business. And that's all around automation and robotics.

And it's not just robotics doing the tasks of what a human could do, but it's the AI learning capability within those systems that are iterative. So these machines are learning how to do tasks the way humans can do them, but they're also learning on how to improve the way they do the task. A really good example is recent packing equipment we've installed in our Tatura facility at Flavorite, actually uses AI to learn how to optimise pack out rates. So it's something that the machines are continually learning.

I think the next frontier with AI will actually benefit the agriculture space quite meaningfully and allow us to get more efficient reduced labour, which is probably one of our biggest costs in Australia and adopt that technology into a food and agriculture context.

Related Content

Hive and Wellness Group

(Unrealised)

Investment Year

EXIT YEAR

Description

The Local Broadband Network Company (LBNCo) is an installer and owner of superfast broadband networks in residential developments. LBNCo is engaged by property developers to install and maintain the fibre infrastructure, and sells ‘wholesale’ network acces to the retail service providers who then provide services to the tenants. LBNCo is now part of Uniti Group (ASX: UWL) following its acquisition in August 2019.

Stone Axe Pastoral

(Unrealised) 

Investment Year

Description

Stone Axe is a producer of ultra-premium wagyu beef. The company has operations in NSW, QLD, WA and Victoria and is actively growing its herd via large scale embryto transfer program. Stone Axe has rapidly grown to become on of the largest fool blood wagyu producers in the world.