Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FruitWatcher (FruitWatcher: Monitoring traceability assessment for fresh products transport conditionsWatcher: Monitoring traceability assessment for fresh products transport conditions)

Teaser

Fresh product traceability is a trend in modern society and involves different stakeholders from a local fruit producer to final consumers in a distant supermarket, with extensive use of means of transportation.All stakeholders are interested in keeping an unbroken cold chain...

Summary

Fresh product traceability is a trend in modern society and involves different stakeholders from a local fruit producer to final consumers in a distant supermarket, with extensive use of means of transportation.
All stakeholders are interested in keeping an unbroken cold chain, that is, an uninterrupted series of storage and distribution activities which maintain a given temperature range that depends on the transported goods.
Breaking this cold chain involves pains and problems for all of them:
- Producers are not selling their product in the best conditions, damaging their public image and operating account.
- Transport companies fail in their main acitivity.
- Insurance companies are sometimes paying for the losses.
- Export companies suffer discounts at arrival to destination.
- Supermarkets lose sales due to a worse goods quality and appearance.
- Citizens are consuming goods with poorer quality and properties.

As a technological company, GEEZAR has used IoT tools fo developing FruitWatcher, fulfilling the information vacuum in transport processes and advancing to a real time reliable solution that assesses traceability and good conditions along transport for achieving the best consumption quality.

The main objective of this project was putting in the market a service for monitoring the goods along transportation processes, after an initial development and having Minimum Viable Products already in testing stage. GEEZAR needed to know about the actual market response in actual sales conditions, to implement further development and features and to establish a reliable operating framework in terms of IP, production, pricing, post-sales, public image, etc.

All these objectives have been worked out along Phase 1 works, reaching the following conclusions:
- The service is being accepted by the market, confirming free initial trials as a right strategy for achieving actual sales.
- We can provide side services for non refrigerated vehicles positioning at competitive prices. This increases our range of potential customers.
- The chance of collaborating with vehicles manufacturers for FruitWatcher device preinstallation as manufacturing option exists and one manufacturer is already working with us.
- The chance of placing the device in multi-platform containers has been discarded for operational and market reasons.
- The problem of device returning to our customers in case of intercontinental shipments has reached a satisfactory solution. This problem prevented some potential customers to actually hire the service.

Therefore, the project has the commercial potential we needed to confirm and GEEZAR bets on it as its main business line.

Work performed

Of course, different changes had to be carried out and general strategy has been cleared. Main updates consisted of:

• Now, customer segments have different physical devices although they share visualization system.
• Visualization system is common for all customers (despite future updates).
• We have entered vehicles manufacturers segment and discarded containers manufacturers.
• We have a plan for customer acquisition and future segments exploring.
• Trials are a must for sales processes. Right now (end of September 2016), we have 100 devices ready for trials.
• Revenue model consists of an initial payment for device purchase and a pay-per-use system that uses to turn into a monthly flat rate.
• Pay-per-use and flat rate systems include a global division into zones adapted from the one we pay to our telecom supplier.
• Flat rates consider the chance for our customers to deactivate the device for saving money in low activity seasons.
• We have a seasonal analysis of our customer segments and their activity, so we can carry out a more accurate sales plan.
• We have solved device return problem for intercontinental shipments, so the main barrier for our fruit producers and exporters segment has fallen.
• Miniaturization future plan.
• Risks and mitigations plan.
• Scalability assessment.

All these changes and updates are further described in feasibility study and have gone directly into our financial plan.

That financial plan includes different options depending on the funding to be obtained. Of course, the more funding we get, the faster we will be able to carry out an optimal market uptake.

Final results

We have achieved a service that goes beyond our competitors in terms of service features and pricing.

Right now, we are the first service to make real time monitoring of temperature, humidity and GPS positioning with configurable alarms. Moreover, our price is lower than our competitors\' up to the point that we are cheaper than some GPS positioning systems (with no more uses).

About impact, our mean ambition plan includes maintaining a headcount of 26 high level professionals in year 3 and presence in 8 countries in 4 continents. Also, our revenues for year 3 is expected to reach €945.000.

Anyway, economic or employment impacts are not the only ones. We plan to be able to provide society with a full food lifecycle traceability that will not only increase food safety and quality but also it will reduce food waste.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.fruitwatcher.com.