date:Mar 28, 2023
stralia has a high labor cost. To produce more efficiently and export, were competing on a world market that has lower labor cost. I felt robotics was the best opportunity to create a level playing field internationally.
COVID impacted us greatly. We use Pacific Islanders and backpackers to pick fruit. Due to travel restrictions, we couldnt get people, leaving us to rely on the Australian workforce which is unreliable.
The robot harvester is trained to pick apples off the tree based on size,