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Premium Packhouse management software from farmsoft delivers comprehensive pack-house management for fruit, vegetable, and fresh produce processors, packers, importers and exporters

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99% less fresh produce packing waste

Accurate fresh produce & food inventory management reduces waste through better FIFO stock rotation, stock-takes, and inventory alerts. RFID pallet control (optional) for precision inventory tracking. 

Save time packing fruit & vegetables

Increase the efficiency of fresh produce inventory using options like scanning incoming bar-codes to reduce data entry & errors, integrate with scales for automatic weighing, ore RFID for automatic fresh produce inventory tracking.

Better fresh produce quality control

Guarantee the quality of your fresh produce packing with flexible fresh QC testing systems from your phone or tablet. Customer feedback management, supplier quality control and more...

Reduce fresh produce packing errors & control production

Project required inventory (and shortages), schedule orders to be packed in batches , automatic alerts to prodution line managers.

100% accurate fresh produce order shipping

Shipping teams are guided through the dispatch process from picking using a phone or tablet (optional bar-code scanning), automatic picking, thru bill of lading, invoice, and automatic shipping notifications for customers, transport, and sales teams.

Reduce fresh produce packing administration costs by 40%

Automatic generation of fresh produce labels, bill of lading, invoice, picking documents and more; reduces administrative burden.

Easy audit & recall systems reduces compliance costs.

Faster fresh produce inventory storage  inventory

Accurate fresh produce & food inventory management delivers reduced waste and increased employee productivity. Manage FIFO, improve stock-take accuracy, scan harvester data, and keep a watchful eye on your inventory... Easy stock-take identifies shrinkage and helps reduce waste from ageing. 

100% accurate fresh produce traceability

Maintain strict fresh produce traceability and high food safety standards always. Perform recalls based on lot/batch, pack date, invoice #, inventory #, pallet #, delivery date, purchase order #, or perform a recall on your own user defined data. Perform instant recalls both up and down the supply chain. Makes audits easy and instant. COVID-19 food safety & auditing available. 

Reduce fresh produce waste by 99%

Inventory control ensures there is no 'shrinkage', food inventory is FIFO managed, and expiring inventory always monitored.

Reduce administration time by 60%

Automatic paperwork, labels, and reporting reduces the burden on administration teams and saves everyone's time.

Better fresh produce quality now

Quality control and food safety has never been easier with industry standard quality tests, food safety checklists; or configure your own tests. 

100% accurate orders!

Guarantee only the correct inventory is shipped for each order, on time, every time.

Packhouse management software

Farmsoft fresh produce packing app is for fruit & vegetable packer, processor, import/export.  Full fresh produce traceability, auditing, inventory control, and fresh produce business management app.

Quality inspection for fresh produce

Consistent and accurate quality control ensures higher customer satisfaction and adherence to industry, de-facto, and in-house quality control standards. Track supplier quality performance, customer feedback & complaints, create QC tests for any part of the fresh produce & food manufacturing process (incoming goods, raw materials, finished goods, expiry test, export/shipping tests), daily factory hygiene, machinery calibration, employee checklists... 

Fresh produce logistics

Manage orders, pack to order, picking and auto picking, dispatch & shipping process. Generate invoices, bill of lading, pick slips, export documentation and other sales documents... Dispatch teams are guided through the dispatch process ensuring every order is filled perfectly, and on time. Paperwork such as BOL, freight documents, export documents are automatically generated based on the customer and destination to guarantee no rejected shipments or issues at borders.

Fresh produce labels

Generate fresh produce SSCC pallet labels, GS1 case & PTI labels, bin labels, batch labels, traded unit labels, harvest labels and more. Use the built in industry standard labels for Walmart, Woolworths, Aldi, Tesco, Loblaws etc - or design your own with the built in label & report designer. Our team can design all of your fresh produce documents to ensure farmsoft matches your requirements perfectly.

Fresh produce packing control

Sales, Quality, Profit, Dispatch, Pack, Farm...... Dashboards for sales teams provide instant impressions of customer orders and current inventory levels. The dispatch dashboard helps plan shipments, order of loading, and transport companies & drivers... The Profit analysis dashboard shows margins per unit and most profitable customers. Use our API to access your data however you like.

Fresh produce batch packing

Project required raw materials needed to pack/manufacture orders, potential shortages, schedule multiple orders to be packed in batches on selected production lines with a few clicks, automatically send new job alerts to managers, schedule additional harvests, analyze outstanding orders. Manage entire packing and manufacturing process with ease.

Fresh produce alerts monitoring

Automatic alerts for shipments can be sent to customers, transport providers, or even team members. Every time a batch is finished processing, receive an alert with the pack-out breakdown and percentages of grades & quality and waste. Alerts can include simple shipment notifications, or even invoices and original order details. Other alerts include order changes/modifications, yield reports, new order alerts, and low inventory alerts... 

Farm app option

Implement the farmsoft Farm Management suite to provide a comprehensive integrated business management solution from seed to plate. Includes automatic task management, best practices, budgeting, farm inventory, PHI enforcement, audits, residue reporting, USDA reporting, dashboards, recalls and more... 

Fresh produce supplier quality control

Suppliers must know that your business is measuring and tracking their performance. Any trends that effect the quality of fresh produce can be quickly detected, automatically traced back to the fresh produce supplier (especially if a result of a customer complaint / feedback), management and purchasing teams are automatically alerted when a supplier quality issue happens. Quantify your suppliers quality using the Supplier Quality Dashboard. 

Fresh produce finance apps

Share data with your Xero finance app, Quickbooks, MYOB, SAGE, using our API, or request our team perform a custom integration for your fresh produce company. This is an optional module, please ask your consultant for additional details and discuss your specific requirements, additional costs will apply for integration with your chosen finance app. 

Fresh produce RFID

Automatic tracking of each pallet’s exact location. Makes loading orders accurate and easy, stops errors during shipping. Very low costs to setup your hardware using farmsoft’s innovative RFID for fresh produce solution. Pallets put onto truck are auto added to order, and checked for accuracy. Pick up a pallet and its RFID instantly selected. Add pallet/bin to production line and its auto added to batch for traceability.

Fresh produce API

Integrate with virtually any other app or software solution using the farmsoft API. It's open! Anyone can use it. Your in house I.T. team, or any external I.T. vendor you want to help you with integration. Add your own reports, extract special data, or even create new interfaces between farmsoft and any app such as accounting, payroll, B2B, B2C. Other integration in farmsoft includes the ability to integrate with selected weigh scales to capture fresh produce net delivery weights.

Fresh produce bloch-chain

Increase customer confidence and prove the credentials of your traceability integrity and transparency with block-chain ledger technology.   We use the chain-trace.com blockchain solution. (Optional module not included with standard Packing / Food Manufacturing ERP solution).

Improve fresh produce production planning

Efficient management customer orders, and the ability to analyze orders gives you new production planning tolls in farmsoft. Ensure each order is filled to exact specifications, on time, every time. Increase customer satisfaction and retention, and reduce stress in the packhouse with confident production planning using work orders/batch orders, sales contracts, sales orders, and sales order items. Are you manufactruing or processing chili products? Try farmsoft for chili processing. 

Accurate fresh produce traceability

Quality officers are guided through the quality control process, presented with images and instructions for each test, ensuring they know what to look for at all times, corrective actions are presented if a quality issue is detected. This makes training new fresh produce quality control officers fast, and ensures consistency in the quality control management processes for incoming fresh produce, post pack/post processing, storage, and dispatch. 

Efficient use of fresh produce cold stores

Maximize your cold store use and rotation of stock using farmsoft's pallet maps, and precision traceability tracking with expiring inventory reminders.
Cold store management software for fruit importers, exporters, packers, cross docking, and short and long term fruit storage.

Packhouse management software

The farmsoft inventory control app provides business wide quality management inspection systems for fresh produce, food manufacturing, seed processing, meat packing & processing, and flower packing.

Salad manufacturing & packing for food service & convenience packs: Easy management of the salad processing, mixing, and packing environment. Pack salad convenience products, mixed fruit, mixed vegetable products.


Salad manufacturing & packing for food service & convenience packs: Easy management of the salad processing, mixing, and packing environment. Pack salad convenience products, mixed fruit, mixed vegetable products
The best salad dressings are those that enhance the overall taste while still allowing the individual salad components to shine. Today many varieties of salad dressings and sauces can be found everywhere which means we can add interesting twists and flavors to our salads and other dishes. Therefore, MF Food has presented its wide unique range of salad dressing that cater to all its customer’s desire.
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Freshness is everything when it comes to salads; the crisp and refreshing taste, the vibrant colours of the different ingredients – not to mention the nutritional values - are the qualities that make a salad appealing for your customer, and all of them are quickly lost right along with the freshness of the vegetables. As such, choosing the right packaging for your salads becomes an important choice. By using the right salad containers, you can keep your salads at that perfect level of freshness for quite a length of time.

Fresh produce RFID inventory app manages fresh produce inventory for packers of fruit, vegetable, meats, and seafood. Fresh produce RFID solution from farmsoft is inexpensive to implement and uses easily available inexpensive RFID hardware for fresh produce.  Fresh produce RFID inventory app fruit & vegetable handling & control
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the reference scenario, highlighting main problems. The proposed reengineered model and its implementation in a real pilot project are reported in Section 3. Main details related to the software system architecture are summarized in Section 4. In Section 5, a description of the hardware adopted in our work is reported. A system validation is discussed in Section 6. Finally, Section 7 summarizes the conclusions and sketches future works.

RFID inventory control for fresh produce: Main Requirements and Open Issues in the Fresh Vegetables Supply Chain.

Fruit and vegetable inventory management: manage fresh produce inventory, fruit & vegetable rotation FIFO and expiry of fruit & vegetable inventory.  Fruit and vegetable inventory management and fresh Produce Stock Control
Fresh Produce Stock Control
Fruit and vegetable inventory management
FarmSoft provides extensive fresh produce stock control of incoming fresh produce & fruit/vegetables from the very moment it is delivered to the pack shed. Comprehensive Fresh Produce Stock Control is delivered via labeling, movement tracking, temperature control, quality control, documentation, and registration of incoming produce – all of which is essential in creating a strong traceability audit trail. FarmSoft provides comprehensive Fresh Produce Stock Control for fruit, vegetable, hop, grain, flower, and other fresh produce.

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Business management app for salad packer processor wholesaler: manage entire salad packing process from raw salad materials to salad mixing, salad packing, and salad sales & logistics.  Mixed salad loose leaf salad lettuce packing
Use farmsoft to manage the entire mixed salad loose leaf lettuce packing operation for any loose leaf specialty products including spinach, baby kale, green coral, mignonette, butter lettuce, 4 leaf salads, baby cos, rocket, arugula, chives, basil, bunch dill, bunch kale curly, bunch kale deck, bunch mint, bunch silver-beet, bunch tarragon, bunch thyme, tuscan kale, chard, continental parsley, cochran iceberg, cochran cos, mizuna, chard, salad blends, organic salad packs, Asian mix, braising mix, frissee, organic raw, raddichio, Lollorosa, red romaine, spring mix, wild arugula.

Configure the ingredients for each loose leaf salad & lettuce recipe, project the required materials, produce orders based on requirements (or schedule new harvests or new plantings) to ensure mixed salad loose leaf lettuce packing is accurate and easy to manage.
Salad Processing – Creating Spring Mix
Salad Processing – Creating Spring Mix
Business management app for salad packer processor wholesaler
Post published:April 9, 2019
The spring mix harvesting process has been documented previously on the blog (see post HERE), and in this week’s blog, you get to see the salad processing step, showing what happens to those different types of lettuce varieties after they are harvested. The continuation of this process takes place with the same company, Babé Farms, at their processing facility (Fresh Venture Foods) in Santa Maria, California.
What Lettuce is in Spring Mix?
Although we are accustomed to the name “spring mix”, all companies use their own unique mixture to create their specific mix. For Babé Farms, they create multiple different types of lettuce mixtures. In the picture below, you can see how they dictate what types of lettuce are included into each mix.


Manage your seed, oilseed, cereal inventory traceability, orders, seed storage, seed sales, wholesale and export. Organic and conventional. Silo storage, cleaning, packing. Print Canadian Grain Council (CGC) forms and reports.  The app manages your seed, oilseed, cereal inventory traceability, orders, seed storage, seed sales, wholesale and export. Full business management solution for grain, seed, and cereal handling.
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Organic and conventional. Generates paperwork for CGC and other government requirements; saves your time.
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Create Purchase Orders to order seed inventory, or receive seed inventory from your own farms without needing an order
Record your customers orders of seed (optionally allow customers to order online using the shop, or B2B portal)
Receive bulk seed deliveries and store in silos, traceability is full maintained from the instant you receive the seed inventory, to post sales auditing and mock recalls.
Perform a quality check during the delivery process to determine waste % or dockage.
Generate Form 7 for CGC Canadian Grain Commission (sample here!) Ask us if you need more forms for your local region
Report rapidly on the total seed inventory stored in each silo, including off-site storage locations
Processing seed: Clean, sort, perform safety scanning (x-ray, magnetic) on seed stocks
Store cleaned seed inventory in clean silo
Bulk load trucks directly from seed silo for bulk sales
Pack cleaned seed inventory into 1MT, kg bags, and LB bags
Controlled seed sale process tells shipping teams exactly which inventory should be shipped to which customer
Shipping container management, temperature recorder numbers, seal number, and more for exporting seed stock
Generate reports that give you all the information you need for auditing and reporting such as CGC Weekly report, CGC Monthly Liability Report, CGC Receiving report, CGC Settlement report.
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5 Ways to Reduce Fresh Produce Inventory Waste Right Now
5 Ways to Reduce Food Waste Right Now
“Sometimes the simplest lessons are the most groundbreaking.” That truth is over 30 years old, but its words still resonate loud and clear.
The goal of today’s post is to share a some surprising, yet logical ways to reduce inventory right now…
The key to reducing inventory is not to buy LESS; the key is to buy LATER. Teams that use this inventory reduction strategy and mindset will free up incredible amounts of capital for their organizations.
THE KEY TO INVENTORY REDUCTION IS NOT TO BUY LESS; THE KEY IS TO BUY LATER.
So as you might guess, the opposite absolutely holds true:
The key to raising service levels is typically not buying MORE; it is buying EARLIER. Perhaps we’ll save that breakdown for another day. Here we’ll explore ‘buying later’ as a strategy to reduce inventory and challenge you to see if there’s opportunity to do so in your organization.
How to reduce inventory in supply chain planning: those first few days
Let’s start with a quick word about your initial days using an advanced supply chain planning solution. Most companies experience a dramatic and welcome inventory reduction when they first move from the world of old buying reports and spreadsheets to a best-in-class inventory planning solution. The advanced forecasts offer dramatic results as expected, and the proper safety stock amounts finally being placed on each item often offer a shocking inventory reduction.
This common benefit is based on the fact that most companies carry too much safety stock on their fast-moving, or smooth ‘A’ items. Once those victories are realized, much more opportunity typically unfolds. Even a strong team with an advanced inventory planning and replenishment solution will continue to see deeper results as they increase their knowledge and be more open to coaching and growth.
When safety stock gets inflated, here’s why


Optimizing Fresh Produce Inventory Management.  oday’s PlanningPosts chat is with long-time veteran in the inventory optimization world, Tracy Coon, along with PlanningPosts evangelist Dan Craddock, on the topic of Optimizing New Item inventory.

Summary: New item forecasting is a troubling area because of its tremendous profit impact. If a company has $50M in inventory, New Items could be $5M or more of that investment. Yet, as Tracy explains, so few demand forecasting teams make optimizing new items a key focus. Download now to learn some strategies for putting a sense of urgency behind improving the performance of your new items across the portfolio.
Todd Intro: I am here with two people who consider themselves lifelong inventory optimization professionals. They love the profession and their careers have been built on educating inventory analysts and inspiring inventory planning and demand forecasting excellence.
Welcome, Tracy Coon and Dan Craddock! It’s great to have you both on the show and I know you want to dig into this topic in a big way. You were both replenishment analysts for wholesale companies prior to becoming education consultants.
Dan & Tracy: brief introductions
Todd: Despite this passion for the profession, you both say that you continue to be frustrated by the lack of success in one key aspect of a company’s inventory:
Optimizing Fresh Produce Inventory Management
Optimizing Fresh Produce Inventory Management.

Fresh produce supply chain planning, demand forecasting, pricing: fruit & vegetable packing
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Demand Forecasting,
Inventory Optimization, and
Price Elasticity
Supply chain planning relies heavily on science and algorithms for better demand forecasting and inventory management. This includes forecasting independent customer demand, which changes with customer preferences. It also includes dependent demand that aggregates demand streams at a stocking point upstream to other echelons of the supply chain.
Let’s look at how science and machine learning in Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) is streamlining demand forecasting, inventory optimization and price elasticity to improve long-/short-term planning for complex distribution supply chains.
Why is the Distribution Supply Chain So Complex?
Many factors are contributing to increasing complexity in these forecasts, including outbound customer demand volatility, managing multiple suppliers with long lead times (especially overseas), constrained transportation capacity, and increasing inbound supply line volatility.
Fresh produce supply chain planning, demand forecasting, pricing: fruit & vegetable packing
Fresh produce supply chain planning, demand forecasting, pricing: fruit & vegetable packing
Large Assortments
Distributors face even greater complexity in managing their supply chains. Large assortments to serve existing customers has become key to differentiation, but introduces an ever larger assortment with intermittent, lumpy and sparse demand in the “long tail.”

Essential Steps to Expert Demand Planning in fresh produce supply chains.  Order Analysis: Essential Steps to Expert Demand Planning in fresh produce space
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You’ve taken care of your customers’ needs. You’ve created your replenishment order, but you left a few stones unturned… What about those Special Orders? Before you send the replenishment order to your supplier, don’t overlook the opportunity to boost revenue and cut costs in these 3 Special Order areas:
Events and Promotions,
Investment Buys, and
Overstock Transfers and Balancing
It has been almost 23 years since we first heard a phrase we’d love to borrow from the beloved Jerry McGuire… “Show Me The Money!” That’s exactly what Special Order analysis does for your business.
We are stoked that you are here today for Step 6 of our 7 Essential Steps to Expert Demand Planning series. We’re here to Show You The Money. Well… more like you are here to Show Yourself The Money through strategic Special Order analysis. We’ll give some strategies you can use to optimize Special Order opportunities and drive incremental margin on all your promotions, investment buys, and overstock transfers/balancing. These areas offer a fast, easy win for boosting sales, expanding margins, elevating your products, and balancing overstock.
Special Order analysis happens after basic replenishment and before the final rounding of buying multiples and supplier brackets in the demand planning process:
Demand Forecasting
Lead Time Forecasting
Order Cycle Optimization.

Post harvest traceability software for for fresh produce packing, processing, export/import, sales – for fruit, vegetable, seafood packers.   Better handling of FIFO, monitor expiry dates, and accurate fresh produce inventory control & labeling help to reduce waste in packing, processing and storage. Further waste reduction can be achieved with other handy farmsoft features like Quality Control that ensures ‘waste’ is actually waste, waste reports that automatically calculate waste from a batch based on inputs and outputs – allowing you to identify potential areas of shrinkage, incorrect categorization, or mishandling.

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post harvest traceability software
post harvest traceability software
Improve dispatch accuracy
Let farmsoft improve the accuracy of your dispatch processes by managing orders, allowing assignment of inventory to orders and invoices from phone or tablet (directly from the forklift) or by PC/Mac. Documentation required for each specific customer can be automatically generated based on each customers requirements. Ensuring correct documents accompany every shipment reduces the possibility of a shipment rejection.
Consistent quality control
Quality officers are guided through the quality control process, presented with images and instructions for each test, ensuring they know what to look for at all times, corrective actions are presented if a quality issue is detected. This makes training new qual

Fresh produce marketing


Fresh produce marketing software reduces shrinkage, increases efficiency, and makes compliance easy. Turbocharge your profits now with farmsoft!Fresh produce marketing software reduces shrinkage, increases efficiency, and makes compliance easy. Turbocharge your profits now with farmsoft!
One hundred percent accurate traceability starts at the purchase order or delivery phase, and follows the fresh produce through all of the fresh produce processing and storage phases all the way to the customers doorstep and beyond. Recalls can be performed based on only a small amount of supply chain information, making farmsoft one of the best fresh produce traceability software solutions on the market. Trace software marketed to customers using any of the following: pallet number, inventory number, batch number, customers reference, purchase order number, sales order number, contract number, delivery date, invoice, delivery docket number and more. Farmsoft makes fresh produce marketing, importing, exporting, and sales and distribution easy with a range of handy features to ensure maximum traceability and efficiency in the fresh produce sorting, grading, packing, processing, warehousing, wholesaling, and sales & distribution processes.
Farmsoft fresh produce marketing software has solutions for all produce marketing enterprises and packhouse and pack shed.

Fresh produce processing software delivers reduced waste and shrinkage, increased traceability and profit. Make fruit and vegetable packing easy, automatic paperwork generation, reduce administration cost.
Fresh produce processing software
Fresh produce processing software
Farmsoft is a full featured fresh produce processing software solutions. Delivering comprehensive management from the delivery of goods, through the entire storage, washing, sorting, grading, packing, processing, and sales, marketing, and dispatch of fresh produce. Farmsoft includes many optional modules from which clients can choose to build a perfect solution for their fresh produce processing enterprise. Access farmsoft from the cloud, or install on your local server. User your PC / Mac / iPhone/Android / tablet / industrial PDA to access farmsoft. Improving the traceability and reducing post harvest loss is the cornerstone of the farmsoft Packhouse solution. Farmsoft enforces good manufacturing practices to ensure minimal waste and maximum pack shed profit. Comprehensive quality control systems ensure quality testing is fully standardized and quality managers are alerted immediately of any significant quality deviations.
Fresh produce processing refers to the the conversion of one or more fresh produce inventory (for example fruit, vegetable, seafood, herbs, hop, flowers) into a value added product. The value added product may be simply a dried herb, or may be a more complex product such as a mixture of processed juices. Fruit and vegetable production and consumption in Asia and the Pacific region have shown a marked upward trend over the past several years. Rising consumer demand in the region has come with greater awareness of food safety issues and increased need for convenience and quality.

Packhouse management software from farmsoft delivers comprehensive packhouse management for fruit, vegetable, and fresh produce processors, packers, importers and exporters.
From inventory control through to sales and dispatch. farmsoft packhouse management software fills in the gaps and ensures your fresh produce processing business always has maximum quality, minimum waste, and extreme traceability.
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Packhouse Management Software
Packhouse Management Software
The farmsoft packhouse management solution can manage fresh produce from delivery, short and long term storage, washing, packing, processing, and even full food manufacturing and value adding processes. To complement these features, farmsoft packhouse management solution also manages sales orders, sales contracts, export documentation, dispatch, shipping containers, and invoice preparation. Talk to a farmsoft consultant today to find out how packhouse management can be implemented in your packhouse to increase traceability and at the same time, reduce waste through better fresh produce handling procedures.


Fresh produce management software from farmsoft delivers rapid traceability, waste reduction, and packer accountability for fruit, vegetable, hop, and coffee. For use in medium to large packhouses, and co-operative packing.
Improving the traceability and reducing waste is made easy for fruit and vegetable packers and processors using farmsoft. The farmsoft fresh produce management software suite provides a comprehensive management system that addresses modern packing concerns including waste reduction, employee management and labor capture, traceability maintenance, export documentation, sales, orders, contracts, purchase orders, multi-pack site management and more.
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‍As an optional feature,farmsoft is also ready for corporate deployment, where one company can have multiple packing sites. Each packing site can operate independently, and users at each site can only see the data relating to their activities. Of course, head office is able to view all sites, monitor packing progress, assign sales orders to be fulfilled at specific sites, and track performance and all KPI’s from each packing site. Download fresh produce management software specifications, or download sample packhouse reports.
Fresh produce management software
Farmsoft fresh produce management software for enterprise management of simple and complex packing operations including receipt, sorting, grading, processing, packing, storage, sales and dispatch.

Fresh produce distribution software makes fruit and vegetable supply chain management easy! Manage the entire ordering, storage, packing, sales and distribution processes with farmsoft.

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Farmsoft fresh produce distribution software makes fruit and vegetable supply chain management easy! Manage the entire ordering, storage, packing, sales and distribution processes with farmsoft.
Farmsoft fresh produce distribution software does everything you need to manage a busy fresh produce packing, sales, and distribution enterprise. Handy features like instant traceability, mobile point of sale interfaces, and print on demand solutions make farmsoft the most sophisticated – yet easy to use Fresh produce distribution solution.
Farmsoft fresh produce distribution software makes your packhouse more efficient and reduces post harvest waste.
fresh produce distribution software for fruit importers, exporters, packers, cross docking, and short and long term fruit storage.
fresh produce distribution software
Farmsoft’s easy to use functionality covers all operational requirements for import, export, packing and processing of fresh produce. Use farmsoft’s cold store quality control modules to ensure minimum waste, and maximum customer satisfaction.

Fresh produce management system for inventory management - Orders - Quality - Packing - Sales - Shipping - Recall & audit.  Fresh produce management systems gives fresh produce packers & processors reduced waste and increased traceability.
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The farmsoft produce management system is a complete business management tool for fresh produce packers, processors, and import/exporters and wholesalers. The farmsoft system ensures maximum traceability and minimum waste with an overall process based on systematic management.
Fresh Produce Management System slashes paperwork and administration costs, improves compliance, and reduces waste.
The farmsoft fresh produce management system takes the headache out of fresh produce processing and packing by generating fresh produce documents & food safety management systems. Easily generate paperwork for your fresh produce packing and processing operations.
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farmsoft fresh produce management system
farmsoft fresh produce management system
Today's complex supply chains render firms susceptible to diverse risks and require robust fresh produce management systems; however, SMEs of PFSCs are found to be more vulnerable to risks due to exposure to extremely uncertain weather conditions and consumer concerns about product quality and safety attributes. These firms, however, constitute a major part of the world's economy and provide raw material for many industries such as food and beverage using their fresh produce management system.
These firms, constitute a major part of the world's economy and provide raw material for many industries such as food and beverage, fruit & vegetable fresh produce management systems. A disruption in their supply chains could result in food shortage, high inflation or economic decline. Most of existing studies on fresh produce management systems predominantly focus on perishable industries such as fresh food, fruit, vegetable, meat, seafood, and flowers.

Perishable inventory management software, Reduce perishable inventory waste with FIFO and strict inventory management & monitoring.
Perishable inventory management...
Implement a simple traceability solution, or comprehensive business wide perishable inventory solution – the choice is yours….Perishable inventory management software, Reduce perishable inventory waste with FIFO and strict inventory management & monitoring.
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Detailed perishable inventory management video...
Perishable inventory management software for fresh produce and more...
Download the detailed product specifications here.
Perishable inventory management software, Reduce perishable inventory waste with FIFO and strict inventory management & monitoring.
Perishable inventory management software, Reduce perishable inventory waste with FIFO and strict inventory management & monitoring.
Perishable inventory demands attention. Specific inventory-tracking methods help with the job of managing and accounting for perishable inventory. Perishable refers to items that have an expiration date, such food that will go bad if not eaten in a certain amount of time. Single-period inventory control and first-in-first-out, or FIFO, inventory valuation are commonly used to deal with perishable goods.
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Much of operations is about being able to match supply to demand. This can be difficult with certain business models that sell perishable goods. As a result, managerial accounting has come up with methods for recognizing inventory for perishable goods. Perishable goods, or goods that may have no value in the next period, can be difficult for managers to track; however, the single-period inventory control system can help to alleviate many issues involved with automatically replenishing inventory when it's down.

Export fresh produce using farmsoft fresh produce business management suite...
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A modular solution including comprehensive business management options to choose from to help manage and increase efficiency in your fresh produce packing, processing, and food manufacturing business. With functionality built specifically for import/export of fresh produce including export documentation, certificate of origin, phytosanitary certificates, and other food export requirements.
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MANAGE FRESH PRODUCE EXPORT ORDERS
Track your fresh produce export orders from order to dispatch.
MEET FRESH PRODUCE EXPORT STANDARDS
Ensure all fresh produce handling and traceability is managed accurately.
GENERATE FRESH PRODUCE EXPORT DOCUMENTATION
Rapidly print fresh produce export documentation such ass hipping, invoice, and customs.
CAPTURE PHOTOS OF EACH SHIPPING CONTAINERS CONTENTS(INSURANCE & QC)
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MANAGE SHIPPING CONTAINERS, TEMPERATURE MONITORS, AND MORE...
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RECORD QUALITY CONTROL TESTS ON EACH EXPORT SHIPMENT
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Manage fresh produce export for fruit & vegetable packer, processor, and importer...
Easy fresh produce exporting with the farmsoft fresh produce export management suite.
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Export fresh produce
Manage export processes for fresh produce fruit & vegetable
Turbocharge your fresh produce export...


Coles order management for fresh produce, fruit & vegetable sales...


IMPORT COLES FRESH PRODUCE ORDERS
Rapidly import order files from Coles, saves time, and increases accuracy. You can even import updates and deletions that will be automatically managed.
Coles order management
GUARANTEE COLES ORDERS ARE FILLED WITH ACCURACY
Sell fruit and vegetables by scanning pallets and inventory onto orders, farmsoft will manage the balance remaining on each order to ensure each dispatch is sent with the correct content, at the correct time.
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REDUCE MISTAKES ON COLES ORDERS AND INVOICES
Coles invoices are captured automatically during the dispatch process (or entered by administration team) ensuring accurate Coles orders and invoicing processes.
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Fresh produce traceability app for fruit, vegetable: inventory, processing, packing, sales & distribution.  
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There are currently more than one billion smartphones in use across the world – and that figure is projected to double by 2015. As the use of “smart” mobile devices continues to grow, apps have become an incredibly effective way of providing information and resources to a wide audience. farmsoft provides access to food traceability information directly from smartphones, tablets, and PC's. Essential traceability information can be accessed at any place in the fresh produce supply chain.
An increase in smartphone use happens to coincide with the growth of a consumer demand for more sustainable food – “organic,” “locally grown,” “seasonal,” and “pesticide-free” are becoming more and more common in the vernacular of food sales. In the United States alone, annual sales of organic foods and beverages grew from US$6 billion in 2000 to US$26.7 billion in 2010. And there are nearly three times as many farmers markets in the United States today as there were in 2000.

Fresh produce software for more profit & reduced waste.  Fresh produce software delivers efficiency & traceability improvements for fruit and vegetable packers, processors, & import / export.
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Farmsoft fresh produce software provides end to end business management for fresh produce processors and marketers. Farmsoft fresh produce software manages all facets of the fresh produce process from incoming produce, to processing, sorting, grading, packing and even value adding. The functionality of farmsoft fresh produce software is rounded off with comprehensive quality control, sales, dispatch, and invoicing functionality.
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Farmsoft fresh produce software provides comprehensive labeling, inventory management, pallet management, pallet control, audit functionality, quality control and other fresh produce tools to make every day business management easier.
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Packhouse management software from farmsoft delivers comprehensive packhouse management for fruit, vegetable, and fresh produce processors, packers, importers and exporters. 

From inventory control through to sales and dispatch. farmsoft packhouse management software fills in the gaps and ensures your fresh produce processing business always has maximum quality, minimum waste, and extreme traceability.

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Packhouse Management Software
Packhouse Management Software
The farmsoft packhouse management solution can manage fresh produce from delivery, short and long term storage, washing, packing, processing, and even full food manufacturing and value adding processes. To complement these features, farmsoft packhouse management solution also manages sales orders, sales contracts, export documentation, dispatch, shipping containers, and invoice preparation. Talk to a farmsoft consultant today to find out how packhouse management can be implemented in your packhouse to increase traceability and at the same time, reduce waste through better fresh produce handling procedures.

Combine both farmsoft Farm Software AND farmsoft Packhouse Software to create a complete packhouse management solution.
Packhouse management, traceability compliance, and food safety is made easy with farmsoft packhouse management system,farmsoft drives users through the most appropriate food safety guidelines to ensure maximum food safety, and minimum waste in the packing, washing, sorting, grading and fruit packing process.

Farmsoft Packhouse Software
Packhouse management is made easy with farmsoft Fruit Packing software. Reduce paperwork, decrease administration costs, reduce waste, and increase traceability and profit. Make sales and dispatch easy.

Optionally implement the farmsoft Farm Software to manage the entire fruit and vegetable farming process, from planning, planting, farm tasks, costs, budgets, and harvesting…

arm planning software designed for Packhouse Managers
Have you been looking for farm planning software that has been designed specifically to help you in your role, running the packhouse? Are you fed up with having to make decisions on the fly to try and match up demand with stock control and farm supply?

Well then, let us introduce you to Live Farmer!
How simulation software can improve packhouse efficiency
Posted by Gopinath Ravi on Aug 8, 2018 8:20:45 AM
Compac simulator for fresh produce01

Simulators have been used in a variety of industries to help them prepare for every situation imaginable, or unimaginable for that matter. From surgical training in hospitals, to police and army academies - simulation tools are equipping professionals for everything and anything.


You are likely surprised to see the words “Simulation” and “produce packing” in the same sentence. What can this cutting-edge piece of technology deliver for the industry?

Let’s break it down - a simulator is the imitation of a real-world process or system that is designed to improve technical skills of trainees by offering a safe, risk-free training environment. Simulators are deployed in circumstances where conducting experiments on a real system is impractical because of costs, risks to the environment or personnel, or time involved.

The common threads here? Risk reduction, training, optimization. Read on to see how Compac’s new ‘Sizer Simulator’ addresses these opportunities.

Eliminate risk from training and optimization
Every line operator knows that any change made to a packing process leaves everyone covered in a sheen of sweaty anticipation. Will the next run go smoothly? Or will it leave fruit strewn about and packers standing idle as they wait for issues to be resolved?

A packhouse can be a stressful environment, so changing certain variables in attempt to improve efficiency is perceived as a risk and is often avoided. But these trials are essential to improving performance and are the perfect opportunity to use a Simulator.

A Simulator eliminates production risks which promotes engagement and deeper interaction with the software, making it an ideal environment for training and optimization.

Simulator as a training and continuous improvement tool
Sizer simulator trainingBetween the quality of fruit coming in, to the availability of labour on hand, and varying market demands for products, no two days are the same in your packhouse. Using a simulator to show you the outcome of a production batchallows you to better prepare for the effects of such variability.

Imagine being able to pre-emptively run a batch of fruit that you’ll need to pack the following week. Using the Compac Sizer Simulator, operators can predict the results of tomorrow’s packing schedule against measurable goals, such as cost per pack, packout per SKU and so forth. This allows the preparation of the right packing setup and labor allocation ahead of time.

Simulators for training
Packhouse staff are busy people and the increasing labour supply issues often result in added pressure to take on more tasks and responsibilities during the season. A simulator can ease this workload by giving teams an environment to trying new setups when there is no produce on-site. This allows staff to start planning with conclusive results during the off-season. It can also assist tremendously with on-boarding new staff before a season hits.

Compac’s Sizer Simulator will enable operators to feel empowered to get the most from the powerful software tools in front of them. Furthermore, Sizer Simulator will complement Compac’s training offerings. With a combination of on-site training during commissioning, operator trainer support, workshops in region and comprehensive user guides, operators can confidently engage with the software knowing there is an extensive support structure in place to help them learn, refresh and improve their capabilities.

Maximize the value of your pack
SpectrimandInspectra2Spectrim and InVision operators are supported by a different simulation tool – the Quality Trainer tool. The Quality Trainer offers the ability to test grade maps on fruit and optimize them to prepare for different grower’s produce or varieties before it comes onto the line. This allows the team to make any adjustments beforehand to ensure a quality pack and prevent expensive QC rework.

Increasing packout using simulated results
Ensuring your produce makes it into the highest paying pack is a key focus for us and it is one of the differentiators that drives customers to invest in our technology. Traditionally, improvements to the sorting setup are only made after running a batch of fruit, meaning a large amount of produce is packed in a sub-optimal manner.

The Simulator gives clear insight into complex systems by providing measurable and comparable data to allow benchmarking. It becomes simple to compare different packing setups and identify a winning configuration which produces the highest desired pack output per capita of input fruit. It can also deliver initial startup savings, reduced training costs, reduced damage to equipment and improved packhouse uptime, and improved costs through better direct control of the packhouse processes.

In conclusion...
The Sizer Simulator is a fresh, never before seen addition to the Digitization and Automation trend that is currently sweeping the fresh produce packing industry.

Simulators and have been deployed in almost every best-of-breed company across a multitude of industries for improved training, ultimately increasing bottom line profits through fast paced experimentation and gathering evidence-based results in a risk-free environment.

The Sizer Simulator is a tool that works as an indicator of performance improvement, which provides confidence where previously there was uncertainty and doubt. If you can improve production capacity to 90%, why settle for 80%?

The Sizer Simulator brings value through providing a training environment which upskills packhouse staff and enables them to extract the full value from the powerful Sizer Software to increase yield, improve efficiency and maximize uptime of the packhouse equipment.
Being a Packhouse Manager can be a stressful job, when all too often, you don’t know demand until just three days ahead, leaving you with nowhere near enough time to harvest your crops, check them over for quality, get them packed up and distributed to your customers.

It’s a tough balancing act, trying to keep your team happy, your customers satisfied, and meet the business’ needs. And the most frustrating thing? It happens over and over again.

Packhouse. This is where the planning comes in
That’s where farm planning software comes in
What if you could stop all that firefighting and become more productive every single working day?

How different would your role be if you were given that vital information to help you to plan and get ahead of workloads? If you were able to plan labour more accurately ahead of time, relative to demand? And make confident, informed decisions using real-time information?

With Live Farmer, all of this can become a reality.

Make your farm a better business
Live Farmer can help you match up demand with supply, so you no longer have to make rushed decisions right at the eleventh hour, and your salespeople can see what your order progress and capacity are at any given time.

Our innovative farm planning software can help you to avoid the last-minute chaos of fulfilling a customer order at such short notice. With that comes a reduced risk of disappointing your customers, therefore making your farm an even better business.

Is such a solution something you can afford to carry on operating without?

Concentrated Caucasian woman and her colleague in latex gloves and a face shield sorting cucumbers
Our farm planning software enables you to switch packing to another product in an instant, and keep your team of packers working efficiently, to maximum capacity rather than wasting precious minutes.

Say goodbye to that last-minute chaos of fulfilling a late order, and plan your labour ahead of time with multiple customers. It’s as easy as that!

How different could your role be as Packhouse Manager, and how much more productive could your packing team be, with a helping hand from Live Farmer?

You could soon find out, and start reaping the rewards.
Farmsoft delivers many features to provide enhancements and efficiency improvements in the processing and handling of fresh produce including:

Reduce fresh produce waste by using strict quality control systems that ensure produce that is “wasted” is actual waste. In some circumstances the packhouse may be wasting fresh produce that has been incorrectly classified during the sorting, grading, and packing processes.

Reduce fresh produce waste by ensuring first in first out (FIFO) management of both raw and processed materials. By using a strict inventory management system, the packhouse can reduce waste by ensuring fresh produce expiry dates are closely monitored and all batches and production orders are filled using the correct fresh produce based on the harvest or manufacture date.

Reference: farm record keeping farm management farm software farm budgeting.

‍In a fast paced industry like fresh produce your business, your team and your software must be capable of supporting each other in order to make informed decisions and meet the ever changing demands and requirements of your customers.

The Keelings Knowledge software solution adapts quickly to meet those requirements. More often than not, we will have incorporated the necessary functionality within the ERP software before it becomes a requirement because we make it our business to know what’s coming down the line within the industry.

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FreshPack and FreshQuality are game-changers for the packhouse and coolstore, and will transform workflow and quality management in the heart of your business.

FreshPack
Our FreshPack software enables more efficient grading and packing, and full traceability of all types of produce – from harvest through dispatch and all the way to the customer.
Easily track bins and trucks
Manage all packing and labeling
Improve quality control and traceability
Manage coolstore inventory
Manage orders and payments
Customizable reporting and dashboards
Where your business incorporates fruit and vegetable packing or production, our ERP software is designed to optimise your operation. Additional functionality supporting the packing and production operation help you manage your business, customers and suppliers. Keelings Knowledge software can help your management team make the best decisions regarding produce sourcing, sales, production and distribution.

‍Packhouse Software
Packhouse software providing you with traceability and insights across your whole facility

OVERVIEWFEATURESAPPLICATIONSVIDEOSQUICK QUOTE
iDSnet Packhouse Software allows businesses to increase the insights and data around their packing facility.

Easily track, trace and analyse data surrounding the quantity and quality of fruit grades packed and the efficiency of your packers. Easily integratable into standard packhouse management software, you can have greater insights and connectivity into your packing lines efficiency and effectiveness. Not only this, with the abundance of information that can be captured and recorded you can have greater insights and references for future use stored in an easy access location.

Features

Packhouse Software Packhouse Software
Increase packing floor insights
iDSnet for fresh produce packing can track and identify every carton that leaves the packing floor via its grade and its packer. This provides businesses with more insights around the quantity and quality associated with each grade of produce and their packers.
Ensure the highest quality
With the packer ID being tracked on each carton, businesses can manage and identify who packs what carton, on which line and the quality of their packing. Not only does this assist in providing more information for QA checkers, but it also helps to manage employee administration information (E.g. amounts to be paid per box).
Uncomplicated integration with packhouse management software
iDSnet packhouse software has the capability to integrate seamlessly into packhouse management software. Integration of the two systems, can provide your business with greater insights into your packing line capabilities whilst also helping to ensure it’s operating as efficiently as possible.
Providing greater traceability
Information surrounding the quality of the produce, who and when it was packed, allows for greater traceability options and information for businesses and consumers regarding the origin of products they are consuming and producing. More information means more trust from consumers and a greater ability for businesses to monitor their products, they're quality and consumption.
Assist in recalls
As each carton barcode/label is marked with the produce grade, who packed it and when it was packed, recalls can be a relatively straightforward and painless operation. With iDSnet you can easily identify the affected cartons, when they were packed and where they went, reducing the need for all your products to be removed from the supermarket shelves and incurring the high associated costs.

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Produce Traceability Initiative Solution FreshPoint
Packhouse Management Software
Packhouse Management Software
Location of the Hybrid Pallet Label On Pallets: In the same session speaker Amanda Hill, FSANZ, detailed the current systems in place should a food incident occur either side of the Tasman. It prompted a national recall of all rockmelons from Jensen Farms. Lufa Farms uses biological pest controls, such as ladybugs and wasps.

SPSS (2008) SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 17.0. SPSS Inc., Chicago Google Scholar implement a simple traceability solution, or enterprise wide business management system 1. Technical Challenges, What is the scope of this guideline? fruit and quantity packaged. The Gryphon was chosen to provide more mobility around the packing line according to the type of harvest.

Not logged in Not affiliated 178.148.2.244 Once again, SG Systems are leading the way with their Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) Solution, this time with North America's Top Fresh Produce Distributor, FreshPoint. Important as daily consumer references for premium purchase decision worldwide

E-mail Traceability allows non-contaminated produce to be ruled out for a recall or disposal. This above is what I'd call "reactive (partial) traceability". Implementing PTI: Best Practices for Hybrid Pallet Labeling The outbreak was traced back to Jensen Farms, Colorado, where inadequate sanitation procedures and the use of second-hand equipment were prominent reasons for the disease's transmission.

Laser marking cannot be falsified, it can be invisible and does not compromise product integrity and quality in any way. 30% fruit content: 16% apple, 5% strawberry, 5% blackcurrant, 4% blackberry What are you waiting for? Let us contact you today! Traceability Training and Resources

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Packer? Importer? Exporter? Processor?
Farmsoft Packhouse Software satisfies the most challenging pack house software requirements, including fully featured inventory, quality control, bar code scanning, mobile inventory, temperature zone management, traceability reporting, batch cost management, sales, dispatch and more. Farmsoft Packhouse Software handles any fresh produce including fruit, vegetable, grain, hop, herb, coffee, seafood, shellfish, and more. You can even perform value adding processes with farmsoft, see our food manufacturing section for details.

The farmsoft Packhouse Software helps to increase customers perceptions of quality and food safety by providing bulletproof traceability. Download full details for the farmsoft Packhouse Software here.

Talk to a farmsoft consultant now to discuss Packhouse Software options today!
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Farmsoft Packhouse Software makes reporting easy, and reduces administration costs. Modern packhouses face a myriad of challenges from government regulation, quality management systems, and customer demands. Farmsoft Packhouse Software answers each of these challenges by guiding employees through every step of the fresh produce handling and packing process. Download a sample of farmsoft packhouse reports here. Implementing farmsoft Packhouse Software delivers many benefits for your fresh produce packing and processing enterprise including reduced waste, increased traceability, better employee accountability and reduced paperwork.

Farmsoft’s packhouse solution is much more than just labels and inventory. Farmsoft provides comprehensive reporting for all sections of the packhouse, extreme quality control features, and cooperative grower tracking systems. Invoice, dispatch, and sales analysis are easy with farmsoft.

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Reference: Improve farm efficiency with FarmSoft farm management with best traceability software.

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'Building food safety management capacity'
Growers and packers focus on food safety management individually because every packhouse system is different.

Flexibility in ensuring food safety through the application of practices within the context of business operations is important. To prevent contamination and maintain low contamination rates on fruit if foodborne pathogens enter packhouses, the crucial food safety controls of wash water sanitation, equipment cleaning, and personal hygiene must work every time. Appropriate control systems and their application in practice determine food safety outputs.

In these challenging times hygiene controls have become front and centre of our thinking, as they should. This has presented an opportunity for all tiers of a business to better understand the role food safety controls play in business sustainability and job security.

Food safety management is complex. Long and intricate supply chains and new product development combined with emerging pathogens and a seasonal workforce are surrounded by a consumer base seeking greater transparency and ethical stewardship.

Packhouse Management Software
Packhouse Management Software
Are your food safety controls and their management effective?
A packhouse diagnostic indicator tool, recently developed, provides a snapshot of strengths and weaknesses in food safety management, and, identifies where improvements can be made to strengthen your organisation’s food safety system. Using the diagnostic tool quality assurance staff can measure system performance, providing evidence of effective actions, awareness of shortcomings and potential risks, and a benchmark for continual improvements. This builds food safety management capacity by raising risk awareness and therefore strengthening the food safety culture.

To underpin the accuracy of the tool and inform further development of risk assessment tools for pome fruit, we are gathering additional data on the effects of different orchard and packhouse practices on microbial risk levels through a quick anonymous self-assessment survey.

We need to know what works best to control the foodborne pathogens Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 in packhouses. Completing the survey will help us understand the relationship between controls used by industry and microbial food safety outputs.

Be part of a safer and sustainable horticulture industry
The survey asks 24 short questions about your current food safety control activities, microbial testing, and food safety performance indicators in the context of organisation and supply chain characteristics. It will only take 10 minutes to complete the survey and you will be helping inform a microbial model to assess and quantify risk through the apple supply chain.

To manage and mitigate microbial risks we must understand where they come from, how significant they are and what the optimum practices are for their control. Results of the survey feed into the diagnostic tool which in turn will allow the risk assessment model to address the risk factors in a working environment.

'Please complete the survey now to ensure apple food safety into the future.'

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Research under way to strengthen the safety of apple and pear packhouses
Australian apple and pear packhouses have the opportunity help build industry wide knowledge of absolute microbial risks, and a develop a risk assessment model to best manage them.

A short survey about current packhouse practices is being conducted by University of Tasmania microbiologist Elizabeth Frankish, to help identify which forms of specific control are most effective.

"The information gathered will be a measure of food safety system performance," Ms Frankish said. "Reporting on the collated results will allow a packhouse to compare their management strategy, identify their strengths and weaknesses and consider whether changes or improvements are needed."

Packhouse Management Software
Packhouse Management Software
She added that understanding the effect of packhouse practices in the context of the supply chain is critically important because as potential risk changes, packhouses need to be agile and respond appropriately.

"After a foodborne illness outbreak from caramel apples in the US, the Australian industry became focused on how to prevent a similar event occurring here," she said. "Although historically, apples are a very safe fruit, changes in supply chain management, consumer susceptibility to illness, bacteria themselves and the development of new innovative products that might change inherent apple characteristics could change potential microbial risks.”

Packhouse Management Software
Packhouse Management Software
Ms Frankish says the goal is to produce a risk model with a user interface so packhouses will be able to quantify the effect on risk of changing practices within their food safety system, and this will be a powerful tool to demonstrate effective management.

"The need for the research arose from the increasing quality system requirements in the horticulture industry," Ms Frankish said. "Therefore, the research is focused on characterising the hazards specific to orchard and packhouse practices in order to then quantify the food safety risk and determine what management activities are most effective in lowering that risk."

The survey asks about current control activities, microbial testing, and food safety performance indicators in the context of organisation and supply chain characteristics.

"The empirical evidence being gathered in the research is for apple orchards and packhouses," she said. "Whilst the final risk model will therefore make use of apple data, findings from elements within the model will be relevant to any wet packhouse operation that uses similar practices."

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International contacts of great use to New Zealand packhouse to meet effects of COVID-19
Te Puke-based Trevelyans is one of the largest packhouses in the Bay of Plenty. The company packs kiwifruit, avocados, limes and feijoas. It also provides orchard management services.

Managing director James Trevelyan said that when word of COVID first came on the radar, his mind immediately turned to 2010, when he was in a meeting with the then boss of Zespri discussing what was happening with PSA in Italy. He says when PSA arrived in the country later that year, he had a good understanding of what was needed in NZ.

Fast forward to January 2020, and Trevelyan was talking to a friend in Italy about the COVID-19 crisis who was involved in the kiwifruit sector in that country.

Packhouse Management Software
Packhouse Management Software
“When I put down the phone, I quickly realised that we needed to act now and talked this through with my team,” he says. “From then on, I kept in contact with this friend to learn how the Italians were dealing with the situation. I also had a friend in London to keep me briefed on the situation in Europe.”

The other person who also helped Trevelyan more effectively manage the COVID crisis was a Chinese cleaning lady at the packhouse.

“She was from Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic, and I started asking her about how her family were dealing with the pandemic,” he stated. “Later, I made contact with a Japanese man and the information that these people provided helped shape how we dealt with the crisis.”

Trevelyan says social distancing was a problem, but screens were erected to protect staff and there was a strong emphasis on meeting hygiene requirements. He admits that production at the packhouse ‘creaked and groaned’ during Alert level 4. However, he says in the end they got through the crisis better than many others.

Trevelyan estimates that he spent $500,000 dealing with COVID-19. This included obtaining extra labour, screens and tents and extra hygiene facilities.

Click here to read the full article.



UK: Hochfeld sets new packhouse parameters with Marco
As a key importer and packer of grapes for Tesco, Richard Hochfeld Group (RHG) has used Marco’s innovative Trac-IT Yield Control Module for six years to improve its pack house profitability. Since moving its grape packing facility last year, RHG has further improved yield control management with Marco’s system, over pack has been reduced to virtually zero and packing capability has almost doubled in speed. The company’s managing director Alan Guindi explains how that has been achieved and outlines the value the system could add to packing grapes at source for the UK market.

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Packhouse Management Software
Packhouse Management Software
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How does RHG use Marco’s yield control system?

"The system monitors and controls every punnet packed through the course of a production run and automatically regulates the amount of fruit packed so that the average across the entire run is as close to the required target as practically possible.

"The individual packers stand at a bespoke workstation complete with intelligent weighing equipment, and are controlled by a simple, language-transparent, traffic light system. When the pack is within fractions of a gram of the target, the green lights illuminate to indicate that the punnets are at a satisfactory weight. If the packer removes an out of spec punnet they are locked out of the system until a supervisor ‘unlocks’ to allow them to resume. This means the system is an extremely efficient way of monitoring and controlling packer performance and eliminating human error, whilst virtually eradicating giveaway from the packing process."

Could this system benefit others looking to pack at source?

"There could be huge gains for the entire supply chain if we could get suppliers using Marco’s yield control system at source. In the southern hemisphere, packers will, as a matter of course, over pack by as much as 12%. Although it is largely an accepted part of the business, it is very damaging to profitability, especially when this giveaway is spread across hundreds of thousands of punnets."



Minimising pack giveaway is paramount, but how about reducing waste?

"Wastage is a significant issue – one packer told us that they are losing the equivalent of two bulk bins of grapes per line per day during the manual packing process and many of those ‘lost’ berries would have been well within acceptable specification. Where Marco’s system would come into its own would be through what they describe as 'first fill feedback', which manipulates the pre-fillers to ensure they accurately control levels of waste.

"Using our own example, since we moved to our new facility, the giveaway we have achieved in runs of more than 500 boxes has been one berry per pack either way, which in real terms is zero as you can’t put half a grape in a punnet. Waste very much depends on the quality of the fruit we’re working with, of course, but there has been a noticeable sustained reduction."

Does the yield control management system have any other knock on effects?

"We have found that there is greater efficiency throughout the packhouse as the Marco system has effectively allowed us to pack at twice the speed using the same lines. That doesn’t mean we pack twice the volume now, but we are able to pack using far fewer packhouse hours than before, driving value into the service we provide for both our suppliers and customers. Packhouse costs are generally the most expensive part of the process, so any efficiencies you can introduce into the packing process have to be more than worthwhile."

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Packhouse Management Software
Packhouse Management Software
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Why isn’t everyone using Marco?

"As with all innovations, there remains a need to convince people of the need to make the initial investment. Marco provides a trial process, which first works with a packer to measure existing overpack at the end of a line, then uses a demo workstation with Marco’s yield control software installed to monitor the packing of 100 punnets or so. This simple process will give a clear before and after picture and a precise measurement of the weight saved. When multiplied by real volume and put into financial context, every packer would see the potential ROI – the results are extremely persuasive.

"I’ve already been singing the system’s virtues in Chile and South Africa and took Murray [Hilborne, md of Marco Ltd] to see some of the bigger producers amongst our supply base in Chile. We saw them too late for them to implement anything before this season, but I know that two or three of them will look to introduce Marco products into their packhouses before next season."

How can UK importers be sure that fruit packed overseas meets customer specifications?

"For suppliers packing at source, the Marco Trac-IT module includes software that would provide detailed reports by email to RHG, with the documentation and data required to verify that punnets have been packed to tight customer specifications. The fruit has to be on-spec and packed in the proper manner, of course, but there should be no reason why the weights are not controlled."

How does Marco compare with its competition?

"I have seen lots of different systems around the world that attempt to optimise packing performance, but nothing quite like the Marco system. It is the design and the innovation that makes Marco stand out from the competition, as what they have come up with is an evolution of every system that went before them. The yield control management system integrates seamlessly into the packing process and its simplicity means that anybody can use it with minimal training.

"Dealing with Murray and his team is a delight. We are fussy consumers of any product we buy and we have our views and opinions, but Marco do everything they can to satisfy our needs as quickly as possible. As far as line design goes, Marco are the best I’ve seen and I’d go as far as saying both Murray and their lead packhouse design engineer Wayne are geniuses in their field."