Revolutionising Broccoli

Broccoli presents a unique harvesting challenge. With a harvest window of as little as 24 hours due to weather and reliance on large teams of casual labourers for multiple harvests, growers face both high costs and significant waste. Inconsistent weather conditions can further complicate this, making it difficult to achieve steady yields.

Despite broccoli’s high value per hectare, labour costs and operational inefficiencies often result in low margin returns for farmers.

UPP (Upcycled Plant Power) offers a two-fold solution to these issues. First, they’ve developed an automated, patent-protected harvester powered by machine learning. This harvester selectively picks broccoli at its optimal time, reducing the need for large labour teams and minimising waste. With this innovation, farmers can optimise costs and reduce reliance on casual labourers while ensuring timely harvests.

The harvester will be offered on a rental model, making it accessible without heavy upfront costs. This addresses significant pain points for many growers and helps improve profit margins.

UPP’s second innovation transforms what would usually be considered agricultural waste (the broccoli cores) into high-protein, hypoallergenic ingredients. While most broccoli harvesting discards the stalk and core, UPP utilises these to create a protein that can be incorporated into food products like burgers, sausages, and smoothies.

Broccoli protein is a sustainable alternative to common plant proteins like soy and wheat, and is hypoallergenic. It also has a lower greenhouse gas footprint, making it an appealing choice for consumers seeking nutritious, sustainable foods.

One of UPP’s key target markets for their broccoli protein ingredient is the beef burger sector. By incorporating broccoli protein into burger patties, supermarkets and other retailers can offer healthier, more sustainable burgers to their customers with the added opportunity to reduce their Scope 3 Emissions.

With rising demand for plant-based alternatives, UPP’s broccoli protein offers a nutritious, low-cost solution for food manufacturers eager to meet consumer preferences for healthier, more sustainable food products.

In addition to the food market, this protein-from-waste process brings additional income to farmers from selling what would otherwise go to waste.

As UPP scales, they plan to process larger quantities of broccoli protein, increasing batch sizes from 50kg to 1000kg, allowing them to serve a growing market and boost income for farmers.

In summary, UPP tackles key challenges in broccoli farming by cutting labour costs, improving harvest efficiency, and reducing waste with their automated harvester. At the same time, they transform plant waste into a valuable, hypoallergenic protein source, providing farmers with an additional income stream.

By offering a rental model for the harvester and creating a sustainable plant protein, UPP is helping farmers increase profitability and contributing to a healthier, greener food system.