Prime Highlights
- Hectre won the Most Innovative Hi-Tech Agritech Solution award and the Hi-Tech Kamupene Māori o te Tau award at the NZ Hi-Tech Awards.
- The company plans to use its recent USD $12 million funding to advance imaging technologies that help reduce food waste and improve fruit quality assessment.
Key Facts
- Hectre is a New Zealand-founded agritech company whose fruit management and imaging systems are used in 22 countries.
- The company’s Arc camera can analyse sample sizes about 200 times larger than traditional methods and delivers near-99% accuracy, according to Hectre.
Background
New Zealand agritech company Hectre has won two major honours at the NZ Hi-Tech Awards, receiving recognition for both innovation in agriculture technology and Māori business leadership.
The company secured the Most Innovative Hi-Tech Agritech Solution award and the Hi-Tech Kamupene Māori o te Tau title at the national technology awards event in Auckland. The recognition highlights Hectre’s growing role in helping fruit growers and packhouses improve efficiency through artificial intelligence and computer vision technologies.
Hectre develops software and imaging systems used in 22 countries. Its technology measures fruit size and colour in real time, while its Arc camera scans produce at intake, reducing reliance on manual sampling. The company said the fresh produce supply chain loses an estimated USD $80 billion annually because of inefficiencies, creating a significant opportunity for technology-driven improvements.
Company leadership said the awards reflect both the scale of the food waste challenge and Hectre’s mission to support growers with better data and decision-making tools. The company also noted that the Māori Company of the Year recognition reflects its commitment to values such as leadership, community connections, integrity, and support for people.
Hectre reported that its Arc camera can analyse sample sizes around 200 times larger than traditional methods while achieving near-99% accuracy. This allows packhouses to identify quality issues earlier, improve sorting decisions, reduce waste, and increase operational efficiency.
The awards follow the company’s recent Series A funding round, which raised USD $12 million, exceeding its original target. Hectre plans to use the capital to expand hyperspectral imaging technology capable of identifying fruit defects and assessing maturity at scale.
This achievement shows the growing power behind New Zealand’s agritech field and its influence on how global food gets made and distributed, in supply chains.