The Mexican greenhouse company Prime harvest has been growing bell peppers in Queretaro for more than 11 years. In 2021 they took a new step and expanded their company with a 9-hectare greenhouse built by French greenhouse manufacturer Richel. This expansion is the first phase of a 45 hectare expansion. With this large investment, the stakes are getting higher and the amount of data coming from their greenhouses increases exponentially. Because every little detail still counts the company wanted to find a solution that helps them to organize, monitor, and guard what is happening inside the greenhouses. To manage all cultivation-related data, Prime Harvest has requested Ridder to help them.
Managing productivity
Over the past six years, consultant Victor Rebolledo of Ridder Mexico has been supporting Prime Harvest with the management of the labor and productivity. Since labor is one of their largest operational expenses, it needs to be planned and monitored closely. Rebolledo helped Prime Harvest to implement the Ridder Productive labor-management system in which all production, crop-work and activities are logged, and insight in the productivity is provided. This allows Prime Harvest to manage their labor and productivity real-time and in the most efficient way.
Insight in key performance indicators
But labor is not the only cost-driver that requires close monitoring; natural gas, water, and fertilizers are other major expenses for Prime Harvest. The use of these resources can be considered as key performance indicators and are managed with the climate computer. To gain insight into these KPIs, an overview generated by data from different source systems such as climate computers is required. Unsurprisingly this becomes even more complex when managing multiple sites. Therefore, Prime Harvest asked Ridder Mexico to help them with the data management with the implementation of Ridder HortOS, an online data platform that combines all relevant data from climate computers and labor registration systems.
Platform ecosystem cocreated with growers
With the Ridder HortOS open platform, Prime Harvest’s financial director and head grower will be able to keep adequate oversight and not have to switch from one to another platform. “Many of our systems today just show data as raw input. Next to this, much of the data is still collected manually and stored in excel. We discussed this with Ridder when we were involved during the early development stage of the HortOS platform. We’re happy that we can now start using the first Ridder HortOS modules to relate results to the growing cycles and see how they relay to the goals that are set by our management. It allows us to control our data and provides us access to the right information faster than we now receive most input. Ridder HortOS provides real-time insight from all locations. The open platform also imported data from our old existing climate computer, a Priva system that has been running for many years. This is important to me because then we can compare how we are improving. But there is more; working together means communication, this is always difficult. Therefore, HortOS offers the chat and task function so we can directly communicate with the responsible persons to get feedback and ensure proper data collection.”
