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Content by Lenovo + IntelPowering Perfect Producewith Lenovo and IntelHow Perfection Fresh Australia leverages tech from fieldto fork to stay on the cutting edge.

As the sun rises over Perfection Fresh’s Two Wells farm in South
Australia, the light catches the unique swirl of colors of thecompany’s Kumato® tomatoes ripening on the vine. The deep,rich tones of green and purple are just starting to give way to adeep brownish red, a sign that they’re ready to be harvested andbegin their journey to destinations scattered across thecontinent. This sprawling glasshouse facility is the largest of its
kind in the Southern Hemisphere, and within its 43 hectares
grows an almost unfathomable number of tomatoes andcucumbers.
As its name implies, the story of Perfection Fresh is one of anage-old business embracing the 21st century with cutting-edge
technology to consistently deliver perfect produce. But toeffectively forecast, grow, and distribute these and many othervarieties of produce at scale, Perfection Fresh, Australia’s largest
privately owned fresh produce business, must overcome
innumerable variables that impact time, natural resources, andclimate.
And the only way to do it is through data.

43 hectares of greenhouse farming space at Perfection Two Wells“We start collecting data before the seed is even planted,” says
Francesco Oliveri, Perfection’s Chief Information Officer,“Everything from varietal research and development tometeorological and soil conditions on Perfection's many farms.
And our success depends on understanding the data, bringing it
together, and building the appropriate infrastructure to act onit.” To build this infrastructure, Oliveri would come to partnerwith Lenovo Enterprise Solutions to craft a system capable ofhandling Perfection’s ever-evolving challenges—including having
enough computing power to process all that data and provide
the right insights.

A farmhand examines crop yields for Qukes® baby cucumbers at Perfection Two Wells

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uil in t e ppropri tein r stru ture to t on it“Wacdcchddgf ag da a bad [...] adda a, bbcghfddgagahhd, agdacac.”— rancesco li eri hief nformation f cer at Perfection reshFOv| CIO fiFOn the Ground

Perfection has come a long way since its humble beginnings in
the late 1 s. Founder Tony Simonetta started the company asa small, family-run garden and market in western Sydney. But hesaw an opportunity to grow the business into a wholesale
operation in the 1 s, supplying retailers and customers from anetwork of growers all across Australia. The company nowcomprises eight massive farming operations across Australia andsupplies retailers, restaurants, and even airlines across the wholecontinent. Through a comple blend of trucking, rail, and airtransport, Perfection can deliver even the most delicate
perishables to consumers at peak freshness.
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An empire, however, is not built onjust planting seeds. For a particular
fruit or vegetable to make the cut,it must satisfy several key criteria
top-notch avor and e perience forthe consumer, yield and crop
friendliness for the grower, andresistance to physical threats likeclimate events, pests, and disease.
And even then, a trial run to bring anew product to the market wouldentail a commitment of two to five
years for crop growth andichael imonetta Perfection reshevaluation, so projecting theunique value and mass appeal of a particular product takes
great care.
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As the Simonetta family forged ahead, they knew the margins
for error in agriculture at scale were increasingly narrow and saw
that technology would spell the difference between failure andcontinued success. So Perfection adopted a tech-focusedstrategy to future-proof the business. This started with enterprise
resource planning in 2 , major investments in controlledenvironment agriculture in 2 , and a whole-hog integration ofanalytics and software development in 2 14.
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0On the Grid

Lenovo ThinkAgile servers, powered with 3rd en Intel® eon®
Scalable processors that have been optimi ed for faster analytics,
are hard at work parsing data from a variety of sources back in
Perfection’s head office in Sydney. Temperature, wind speed
direction, humidity, and rainfall information are pulled inthrough local weather stations. At the farms, IoT sensors stream
data from CO2 monitors, moisture sensors, and light meters totrack crop yields and growth conditions. Solar IP cameras,
location movement trackers for farm vehicles and storage
containers, and labor-tracking software in mobile devices deliver
key insights on farm productivity.
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A cluster of Kumatoes® on the ine at Perfection Two Wells
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This hyperconverged architecture combines robust server
hardware with a suite of software solutions that create a single
pool of virtuali ed compute-and-storage resources, streamlining
access to every point of data and putting them at the fingertips
of farmers and e ecutives alike across the company’s e pansiveoperation.
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scalab l y.”
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In an offsite location, backup Lenovo ThinkAgile servers don’t justoffer redundant data security. They allow Perfection to scale thesystem up on demand without incurring any operational
downtime – a highly adaptable and resilient operations
infrastructure that simply keeps Perfection growing.

Fresh Data from Field to ForkThe Life Cycle of a Kumato

On the Road

From the moment the Kumatoes are harvested in Perfection
Two Wells, a race against the clock begins. They must be packed,
loaded, and processed at a distribution center. From there, thedestinations can span hundreds or even thousands of miles. Thisis an especially perilous phase for perishable goods—unforeseen
shipping delays, climate events, and labor fluctuations
persistently threaten the timely delivery of a product whose very
worth depends on a tightly managed schedule.
gain an edge in this battle against the unforeseen, Perfection
must log and track an entirely different dataset, monitoring
geolocation, temperature, and humidity both in real-time and ataggregate levels. This allows them to identify logisticalchallenges along the route like transportation bottlenecks andprolonged downtime that might affect product quality down
the line.
To

Freshly harvested Perfection Fresh Kumatoes®

“This information is critical for accountability,” Oliveri points out.
“Even if 95% of the supply chain is under our control and kept in
the right condition, the 5% that isn’t can cause a great deal oftrouble.” In the case of more delicate produce like raspberries,
using serialized QR codes helps to track dwell time for individual
lots—this data allows Perfection to act on supply-chain issues
with incredible precision and fine-tune their distribution
strategies like never before.

HorizonOn theEven as these plump, perfectly ripe Kumatoes finally reach theirdestinations and are neatly arranged on grocery shelves acrossAustralia, Perfection knows there are no guarantees for the next
crop, the next quarter, or the next big product idea. To staycompetitive and relevant, a third and final class of data must be
considered: consumer demand and satisfaction. To better
forecast consumer behaviors, the company developed its own
demand-planning program that helps them game out scenarios
for specific products, places, and customers. These insights,
combined with promotional sales trends, allow Perfection todevelop a well-informed sales and supply plan, engage with theirfarms and growing partners, and build a robust supply to meettheir targets.
But because the goal is to utilize 100% of the crop yields, thecompany can’t simply be reactive to market conditions. They
must be proactive in mitigating waste and loss. For a productlike tomatoes, this can be accomplished by dividing the yields
into separate grades for different end-users: bulk retailpackaging, value packaging, and saucing, to name a few. For a
product like cucumbers, it can be accomplished by identifying
down-chain opportunities like pickling, which dramatically
improves the product’s shelf life and stretches its value evenfurther.

Crop of Perfection Fresh Qukes® baby cucumbers at Perfection Two Wells

Without the insights afforded by capturing and tracking data
throughout the supply chain, cost-saving measures like thesewould be virtually impossible to enact. And the economic
impact is appreciable for food retailers and restaurants alike,whether your customers are peddling produce in bulk or craftinga bespoke artisanal menu, consistency is the bedrock of an
enduring partnership.
“Our business never stops you can’t tell a tomato to stopgrowing.” Oliveri says with a chuckle. “And we will never be shorton challenges because things will always be changing ver y
rapidly.” The implications of achieving even a near lossless supply
chain are extraordinar y, in part because growers like Perfection
can more reliably maximize their crop yields and thread theneedle of forecasting demand. These data-driven innovations arealso paving the way for more sustainable agriculture whenhumanity needs it most.
…

As the world grapples with rapidly evolving pathogens, foodinsecurity, and unprecedented changes in climate, Perfection’s
innovations in glasshouse farming and supply chain
management are laying the groundwork for the future of mass
agriculture itself. And tech powerhouses like Lenovo and Intelare uniquely positioned to help them build a reliable, agile
infrastructure capable of rising to these challenges as they
modernize their companies to embrace a new era of computing.

“Our business never stops...you can’t tell a tomato tostop growing [...] data-driven innovations are alsopaving the way for more sustainable agriculture
when humanity needs it most.”— Francesco liveri
O

If not for a root-level company culture that champions
innovation, adaptability, and relentless determination, Perfection
Fresh might not have sprung up out of the marketplace inwestern ydney so long ago. These qualities are doubtlessly
fundamental to the company’s continued success. But when you
bolster them with the power of data analytics and scalable tech,
you can ust step back and watch it grow.
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