Getting sorted with innovation

Geoff Furniss played a key role in developing US sales. Picture / Amos Chapple

The Furniss family-owned Blueberry Country has 120ha in blueberries at Ohaupo just south of Hamilton. It has another 40ha at Ngatea in the Waikato, while 200ha is under development in Southland.

However, the biggest money-spinner for the family is BBC Technologies, a processing technology design, manufacturing and testing business that stemmed from growing berries.

"It was costing us a fortune in labour to sort blueberries by colour," said Blueberry Country managing director Greg Furniss, who has an honours degree in microbiology and a master of management studies.

So a sorter with optical sensors was developed that could discard unwanted fruit in a load of blueberries - extremely useful for processing machine-picked berries.

The first commercial sales of BBC's device, developed at Ohaupo, were made in 2000.

The successful development of the colour sorter whetted the family appetite - "We were looking for opportunities to do more," said Furniss.

The next commercial product, which made its first significant sales in 2004, was a system for loading blueberry containers by weight rather than volume.

It means containers are never overloaded. "You don't give product away," said Furniss's son and BBC general manager Geoff, who played a key role in establishing the firm's sales network in the United States where he'd been working in the IT industry.

The pack-by-weight system also means containers are not underweight - important for avoiding complaints of under-supplying.

BBC has global competitors in colour sorting and pack-by-weight equipment but says it competes on a combination of price, a quality product and after-sales service.

However, a third piece of equipment - known as a soft sorter and which had its first commercial sales last year - is one of a kind. It detects too much softness in fruit and clears them out the side of processing equipment with a blast of air. Patents are pending internationally on the device, which won an innovation award at a big agricultural show in the US.

BBC will not give full details of how their devices work for commercial reasons but says they all employ electronic sensors, and can be used for other crops such as cherry tomatoes, olives and cranberries.

Furniss said a lot of the technology incorporated in the devices was off the shelf but then applied to the company's particular needs. The machinery is assembled at Ohaupo.

The company says most bigger Kiwi blueberry operations are now using the pack-by-weight technology.

About 200 of the colour sorters, worth about US$70,000 ($115,000) each, have been sold since 2000, mostly to North America, with some going to Europe.

About 55 of the pack-by-weight systems, costing US$75,000 each, have gone to North America since 2004, while up to 70 of the soft sorters (US$71,000 each) have been sold to North America since last year.

Furniss said the BBC pack-by-weight equipment was dominant in the small tomato sector in the US and the only really significant player in the blueberry industry.

BBC's turnover last year, mostly from international sales in US dollars, doubled to about US$4.5 million or about $6.5 million based on a conversion rate of US70c to the kiwi. Most of the net profit of more than $1 million was reinvested in the business.

Furniss said the high value of the kiwi dollar last year was "the big thing working against us in both our businesses" - so the recent drop in the currency has been welcome.

"Just the exchange rate movement in the last month has put us $1 million ahead in projected sales revenue for this year."

Furniss expects BBC equipment sales this year to be worth $10 million compared with about $2 million from Blueberry Country blueberries.

He said the company had a range of new ideas and wanted to "distil" these into marketable products. "It's one thing to be practical, it's another to be commercial."

This year, they will be marketing refinements to existing products and working on radio frequency product-tracking technology.

Geoff Furniss added that one of BBC's machines was being used to help pack mussels in Marlborough - the only non-horticultural use of the firm's technology it knows of.

"We hope our technology will have increasing relevance to other industries."