Nick Fitzpatrick has spent the last 20 years in Primary Industries, primarily Fresh Fruit and Vegetable sector including 15 years with T&G Global’s International division, including establishing their Latin America business with offices in Peru and Chile, and in Asian market expansion.
More recently Nick worked for California based Science and Innovation start up company – Apeel Sciences, introducing plant based science and technology solutions to post harvest operators globally.
Now consulting to the Agriculture industry, including Callaghan Innovation, Nick is passionate about helping companies to embrace Innovation and Sustainability across their business.
With this background and his current role as Project Lead – Agritech Commercialisation at Callaghan Innovation working within the Agritech ITP, Nick was well placed to inform LandWISE 21 delegates about New Zealand’s place in a big world increasingly focused on agritech development.
Nick introduced the NZ Agritech Industry Transformation Plan and its aims:
- using comparative advantage to grow Agritech as a high value export sector
- Lifting primary sector productivity & sustainability, and enabling companies to move from volume to value
- Contributing to global environmental and sustainability
challenges, and helping feed the world & reduce emissions
Callaghan Innovatoin is developing and early adopter network. THe aims are
- Ensuring companies are solving the right problems
- Increased collaboration between Industry, Agritech companies and government + Research partners
- Better understanding of the ‘size of the prize’, both in NZ and Offshore.
- Better prepared Agritech companies when showcasing/trialing products or going to market.
Nick explained the size of LATAM opportunities while contrasting the nature of agriculture and horticulture in Chile and Peru. Chile has good infrastructure, an educated population, and a qualified
technical workforce in the Fruit industry. Their key products are Cherries, Grapes, Pipfruit, Berries, Citrus and Avocados.
Peru is emerging as regional superpower. It has a different agriculture structure to Chile which has thousands of small farms and hundreads of packers and exprters. Peru has a number of very large farms. The key products are Berries, Grapes, Avocados, Citrus, Mangos, and Vegetables.
In summary:
Chile and Peru in particular are ripe for introduction of new, cost efficient, technology as the fruit sector transforms from being heavily dependant on human labour to embracing automation and
innovation. Chileans and Peruvians are eager to engage and open to new tech in Agriculture.
Listen to a Summary Sound Clip here:
