Avoco Case Study

Case Study: AVOCO

Formed in 2013, Avoco is a consolidated producer and the largest grower-led movement to unite New Zealand's avocado industry and further it's international success.

The union created a commercial force that has the scale to manage harvest volumes and fruit flow better than anyone else.

In this collaborative environment, Avoco can maximise returns for growers and make strategic, intelligent decisions about exports that ultimately makes the industry and its growers more profitable.

Services 800 farms with an average size of 2.5 hectares.
6 pack houses with in-house trained AVOCO inspectors
Conducting GLOBALG.A.P. IFA Option 2 assessments as their compliance and management tool

Goal 1: Reduce Costs

Greame Munroe, Avoco Compliance Manager, wanted to reduce audit times and in-turn, reduce costs. After adopting QuantumLeap in 2018, Avoco managed to reduce costs by 20%.

20%

How did QuantumLeap help Avoco to reduce costs?

Multi-functional auditing - Avoco have the ability to report on several compliance programs from one on-site audit, with only one audit required for GLOBALG.A.P., NZ Food Act, SPRING and SEDEX.

Adding Extra Schemes - by adding other compliance programs as add-ons, Avoco is able to audit all schemes at once, and NOT increase auditing time.

Easy Preparation - Auditors are able to input and upload information before the actual orchard visit to save time, and be more prepared.

Reduced Administration Burden - Data is automatically uploaded from the inspectors' inputs, so that no further data entry is required by team administrators.

Goal 2: Increased Insights

QuantumLeap has enabled Avoco to increase its data capabilities through enhancing data capture for analysis, system improvement and reporting. This makes it clearer for Avoco to gain meaningful insights such as:

Visibility of what is happening in the supplier's orchards.
Ensuring a consistent application of the standard clauses and required actions across all sites.
Clear data to compare orchards, growing areas, packhouses and inspectors.
Identification of areas that are causing growers problems.
Information on grower needs/requirements to identify opportunities .

How did QuantumLeap help Avoco to increase insights?

By providing insights into where Avoco can develop and deliver targeted education and focused technical resources.

By highlighting areas where the training of inspectors could be improved.

By enabling the identification of opportunities for 'add-ons' to meet legislation & community needs and concerns.

By providing insights that Avoco can use to improve its industry leadership and create more improvement projects

By providing actual water management data, which can be used to improve water management processes.

By providing insights into delivery, which can be used to support pro-active relationships with customers.

Offering easy reporting tools for delivering data to supermarket chains on AVOCO compliance and leadership in key social issues e.g. for modern slavery.

Avoco
New Zealand avocado growers and exporters

Primor Produce, Southern Produce, growers, and packers have joined forces to ensure a thriving future for avocado exports to Australia and beyond, in a bid to heighten the interests and relevance of our avocado industry on a global scale.

Graeme Munro - Leader in digital auditing

"QLBS offers the opportunity for undergoing several audits at the same time with data captured filtering from/to/between various standards.

“Reviews, analysis, and reporting of inspections are easy and real-time. This has enabled us to improve the quality of inspections due to analysis and reporting functions.

"This solution has become a 'Management Tool'. It has enabled the timely (daily) production of reports that are being used as part of the management of inspections i.e. timely and real-time looking at what has happened, results, planning ahead and issues identified.”

Graeme Munro - Leader in Digital Auditing

Watch this video clip of Graeme Munro presenting at the Exemplar Global Food Safety Expo.

Graeme talks about the challenges and the major benefits that Avoco have found by introducing online digital auditing using the QuantumLeap platform, including:

the leadership that they now have in the industry,
identification of trends,
real-time assessment and analysis of audit information to improve training,
the speed at which information can be shared,
the time saved and related cost savings,
the speed of change, and
the extra value that has been gained through easily adding additional questions on top of the GlobalG.A.P. schemes that they use.