Our potential solution providers may have an amazing idea, but they might not necessarily have much knowledge of the kiwi fruit industry or even of the fruit industry. And we can wrap not only our funding, but also the opportunity to support them with a ecosystem of very experienced researchers and other experts to help them test their technology, or their initial startup and apply to a kiwi fruit world. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 221 of the Climate Confident Podcast, the go-to show for best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and if you haven't already, be sure to follow this podcast in your podcast app of choice so you never miss an episode. Before we get going today, a huge thank you to this podcast's, incredible supporters. Your backing helps keep this podcast going, and I truly appreciate each and every one of you. If you'd like to join our community, you can support the show for as little as three euros or dollars a month, which is less than the cost of a cup of coffee. You just need to click the support link in the show notes of this or any episode or visit tiny url.com/climate pod. Now, you know how we're all trying to figure out how to make our food systems more resilient in the face of climate chaos? Well, imagine you're running a global fruit supply chain that depends entirely on nature behaving itself. That's today's guest's world. Bryan Parkes is the guy at Zespri. Yes. The world's largest Kiwi fruit brand who's tasked with hunting down the wildest, smartest climate and sustainability innovations from around the globe and figuring out if they can help future proof an entire industry, whether it's using moth proteins to sniff out rot before it spreads or burying carbon in soil with biochar. Bryan's job is to make it real, fast. Today he's here to talk about how Zespri is betting big on bold ideas with their Zag innovation fund and why they're backing everything from electrification on orchards to disease detecting sensors. But before we get into that, in the coming weeks, I'll be speaking with Professor Angel Hsu, who's from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and we'll be talking about generative AI net zero tools. Sangeeta Waldron from Serendipity, who's the author of, What Will Your Legacy Be? Ciaran Flanagan, who's the global head of Data Center Solutions for Siemens and Stuart Thompson, who's president of ABB Electrification services. But back to today's episode, and as I said, my guest today is Bryan Parkes. Bryan, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, thanks Tom and yeah, thanks for having me on the podcast. Really excited to be here. Yeah. My name's Bryan Parkes. I'm Head of Innovation Acceleration at Zespri. Some of your audience might not know what Zespri is, so maybe I should actually explain that one in a bit more detail. Zespri is a kiwi fruit company. We are the largest marketer of kiwi fruit in the world. We sell about 30% of the total volume of kiwi fruit marketed around the world, and you know, sell across the country. We're based outta New Zealand, but we produce around the world from Japan, Korea, and up in Europe as well. And I invited you on the show today because you started something called the Zag Innovation Fund. Tell me, A, what that is, and B, why it is. Yeah, well Zespri actually does other than just marketing and kiwi fruit, we also do a lot of research on behalf of the entire kiwi fruit industry in New Zealand and our growers around the world. So we look at new product development like new cultivars. On Orchard Technologies to improve efficiency and automate the processes, and then our end-to-end supply chain looking to make things more efficient. And we also look to offset risk associated with the growers with biosecurity and environmental risk and sustainability challenges. So what we have is we are looking at how we can stimulate that research and the Zag Fund is a innovation fund that we are looking to use as a bit of a red carpet to bring in new research providers and solution providers from around the world to work with us. Okay. And what's the climate challenge that Zespri saw coming down the track that led to the creation of the fund? We are looking to become more resilient to adapting to climate change. This challenge to us being a natural product that's grown. And natural environment. And so any climate change will impact on our productivity and our future quality of our fruit. Our two biggest challenge that we're looking at is adaptation to climate change and then finding ways to mitigate that climate change. So what we're doing is using the Zag fund as a bit of a way to reach out to the innovation providers and solution providers from around the world to see if anyone is willing to work with us to provide solutions in that area. Okay. And why is innovation outside of your own walls, like with startups and research institutions, so key to how you're approaching sustainability? Yeah, well that's how we approach research in general at Zespri. We don't do much research internally. We have an outsourced model. And so we spend about $40 million a year on research. A lot of that research is done with our existing partners who are very, very good at Kiwi Fruit and have been working with us for decades in this area. But what we are looking at doing is finding ways to work with a broader research expert in the research community. And by having this Zag fund, we can make people more aware of a), what we're interested in and have them have a mechanism to engage with us. And that's what the Zag Fund is doing. It's offering a grant to research providers around the world that from a environmental sustainability perspective, we are really interested in finding adaptation and mitigation technologies. And this will hopefully draw some light including through your podcast Tom. Thank you Bryan. I hope so. Can explain the model that you're using? Venture Clienting, you know, it's, it's not the kind of standard traditional approach of VCs or internal R&D. So could you explain what it is for people who are listening? Yeah. Well, most people have probably heard of venture capital. There's a lot of money out there in venture capital in the research space and that model in contrast to what we are doing, venture capital is looking at taking equity or some ownership of people who are developing startups or have an idea and yeah, that becomes a opportunity to make money from the partners that they're investing in. Venture Clienting is, is quite different. We, we hope more desirable to the people who we want to work with. What we are looking at doing is being a client one of the early clients of a startup or a technology company that is wanting to explore using their technology in a different area. So venture clienting we hope will lower the barrier and hesitance. A lot of startups and owners don't like having to give away the ownership of their ideas and, and future cash flow to another company in order to survive. Venture Clienting is a model where we open up with effectively a no strings attached grant and, and use that as an encouragement to have the research partner want to work with us. So it's a grant that we provide no strings attached, but we also wrap other support around them. We've got some internal expertise in kiwi fruit as you might imagine. And our potential solution providers may have an amazing idea, but they might not necessarily have much knowledge of the kiwi fruit industry or even of the fruit industry. And we can wrap not only our funding, but also the opportunity to support them with a ecosystem of very experienced researchers and other experts to help them test their technology or their initial startup and apply to a kiwi fruit world. You had over a hundred applications in year one. Talk to me a little bit about what kind of applications you got that were interesting because you said some of the people who apply might not know much about kiwi fruit or might not even know much about fruit, so that might sound surprising to people listening. What kind of innovations were they bringing that they wouldn't know much about necessarily kiwi or fruit in general? Yeah, well one of the, oh, so we had 124 applications in the first year, which is, you know, really successful. And of that we went down and selected 11 pilot studies. So just to give you a bit of context as to how the model works. It's a pilot study most of your audience will probably know, but that's kind of your first stage in the, what we call a stage gate approach where you do a small, a hundred thousand dollars or so test to see how things are working. An example is there was a company that's, you know, just getting going as a startup company. They've got a technology where they had identified the proteins in the anther of a moth. Interesting technology, nothing to do with kiwi fruit. And you might know that moths have got this ability to detect pheromones of the ridiculous you know, sensitivity the sensitivities kind of equivalent to, if you think of 400 Olympic swimming pools, the the moth can detect a single sugar cube in those 400 Olympic swimming pools. So an extremely, extremely sensitive technology that has only just been developed and coming to the market. And yeah, they're looking at seeing if they can identify cancer by the smell the person gives off. You know, like you can, you might have heard of sniffer dogs that can pick up cancer potentially in people? Well, this would be a technology that could particularly potentially pick up disease by people just breathing out and detecting what chemicals that are coming outta their mouth. Of course nothing to do with kiwi fruit, but kiwi fruit kind of breathe a bit as well. They emit volatile organic compounds, VOCs. And by having this technology we can understand in real time what volatiles are coming from kiwi fruit, which can teach us a whole lot about what's going on in a particular cold store or a sample of fruit. So for example, if the fruit are at a particular stage of maturity, they can pote emitting a different type of volatile. If there's a, a rot or a a, a rot starting to develop a a bacterial fungal might emit a volatile that we could detect early and intervene. So this technology potentially allows us to reduce fruit waste, better understand our fruit, and ultimately get a better quality product to the consumer, but also reducing the waste along the way. So yeah, win-win from the environment, a win for the consumer and an amazing technology that might totally change the game, but the technology that's never been applied to, to fruit or kiwi fruit before. Fascinating. And any other ones that help in emissions reduction, for example. Yeah. It's probably a more mainstream technology, but it's one I'm personally quite optimistic and excited about. So biochar is it's, a type of charcoal, it's been around as a little while but never really got much traction. Certainly hasn't been tested in kiwi fruit before. So we've got some trials that we've established through the Zag Fund to test how biochar might work in the orchard. There's not too many ways that we might be able to have a carbon positive kiwi fruit production. But one of the ways with that we can, being a natural product, is to be able to have soil carbon assimilation. And by having this the biochar, which is, you know, charcoal, but produced in a very different a specific way, it means that will never break down in soil for thousands of years. And by accumulating that carbon in the soil, not only do we get that carbon assimilation. But we also potentially improve the quality of the soil through having it hold better moisture, having it hold yeah onto the fertiliser and nutrients, so that's more slowly released to the kiwi fruit. So quite an exciting option where we have a win-win on for the environment, but a win for the productivity of the orchards, and then hopefully ultimately a, a win in the quality of the fruit that we deliver the consumer. Very good. Nice. I like it. And what's different about year two of Zag and why the shift to rotating quarterly focus, starting with climate resilience? Yeah, well when we started Zag, we, yeah, we went for the low hanging fruit to use a pun. So we were just looking for anything that was good for the fruit. Good for the community, good for the environment and good for people in general, so health attributes, et cetera. So it's quite a broad spread of what we were looking for. It fits with Zespri's purpose, which is helping people, communities, environment thrive through the goodness of kiwi fruit. So it's quite broad in year one. What we're doing is we're still kind of keeping that gate open. We don't really wanna put anyone off who's got a great idea. But in year two that climate resilience, we wanna have a little bit more of a focus campaign, try to drive a little bit more interest into the areas of adaptation and mitigation. So yeah, we are dialing up for at least the first quarter of this year that specific campaign around environmental sustainability. And climate resilience can mean a lot of things. In the food system, what does it mean for you? Is it tech, soil health, biodiversity, all of the above, something else? Yeah. I, I guess there's two main themes in the area. So in the mitigation space, we're looking at what technologies could we do to mitigate our impact on the climate? So, I talked about biochar already. Another area that we're looking at is electrification on orchard and minimising that sort of carbon production. So that's sort of two areas. Another area of mitigation that we're working on is as the climate gets warmer being a natural product our vines, Kiwi fruit vines are sensitive to the temperature over winter. They require what's called winter chill. So at 900 hours of winter chill being, you know, the time that the vine is below four degrees is required for the good production of kiwi fruit and post winter. But if we have warmer winters and less winter chill, then you know, we've got a real challenge. So we are looking at developing cultivars that require less winter chill such that we yeah, we, we aren't as impacted by that warming. So that's the mitigation. The other one is adaptation along the lines of, working out what we are potentially gonna be impacted from in the future. So that's along the lines of climate modeling and working out what our environments will be in the future in different areas, and if there's other areas that are now becoming more desirable to produce kiwi fruit in the future than what in the areas we're producing in today. And how transferable are the solutions you're piloting? Could other crops or supply chains adopt what you're testing in Kiwi fruit? I believe so. So from a kiwi fruit perspective, we're often, you know, got significant resources relative to other crops relative smaller fruit crops being one of the bigger fruit companies on the planet. And so, yeah, we, in, especially in the climate space, are looking to partner with any other parties that might be, you know, a interested in working with us. Or be interested in picking up our technologies that might be able to help them. We see environmental sustainability and resilience being a global factor and so open innovation we think is the right approach for this area. So yes, we hope to get technologies that are transferable. In fact, we kind of want them to be transferable. One of the key things that allows the technology to grow is its generic relevance. So if it's a generically relevant technology to many parties, that means more resources and effort and energy will go into the technology and evolve it so they'll become more applicable to other industries, but then also become a better technology when it's applied to our industry. So yeah, transferability is a good thing from two perspectives. And what do you look for in a project or a team before you greenlight a project through Zag? You know, what makes the ideal worth betting on? Yeah, there's a, a few criteria that you, you can use. Clearly technology readiness and, you know, does this look promising, a strategic fit. So yeah, does this fit our area that we are wanting to? Do we have a clear pathway to market and ultimately the, the skill and and experience of the team are the sort of four main areas that we would look at. But when it comes down to it, we're, we're quite keen on looking at partners that have got a little bit of a track record and have a technology that's at least a prototype or something that's interesting, beyond the just a, I woke up this morning and had a great idea. Can you gimme some money? So yeah, have, having something tangible with a little bit of a track record. If it's worked on in another sector with a bit of traction and and looking promising, then yeah, that really helps us say, well, yeah, the risk profile of this is lower. Yeah, let's, let's give them some money and see if it works on Kiwi Fruit. And you personally, you've worked in the ag innovation kind of area for over two decades. How has the conversation around climate shifted in that time, do you think? Yeah, it's been a big shift. Re wow. It's been a big shift. I would say it's almost gone from a, a non consideration from when I first started in the Kiwi Fruit world. Through to becoming an awareness and, and us needing to start thinking about long-term impacts. For example, about 15 years ago, we started looking at developing new cultivars that were more tolerant to warmer winters. So I think we had a good foresight on that one. And it's a 15 year process, so that was a, that was in our minds. But as things like trying to reduce our carbon footprint, trying to reduce our water footprint and our nitrogen footprint and other things have come to the fore, we've just been investing more and more research and effort in that area. From a Zespri perspective, we started setting some goals about reducing our water footprint looking to be not only climate and carbon neutral but look to be carbon positive from a orchard production perspective by 2030. So those sorts of targets have come in over the last 20 years. Now we have actually having a, a dedicated team, a sustainability team within Zespri with some really talented and you can imagine very passionate people that are working across our entire company, looking for opportunities for the company to become more sustainable and for climate friendly. Interesting and the ambition to be carbon positive, obviously very ambitious. What does that mean in practice for the company and its supply chain? Yeah, there's two main areas that we think we could be at least carbon neutral and carbon positive. But certainly from an on orchard production perspective, we are optimistic. That's at, that would be the most doable of the targets that we have. Being a biological product, being a plant that, you know, love loves taking in carbon dioxide and turning it into kiwi fruit it's a, it's a great opportunity to be carbon positive. What we can potentially do is with that on orchard electrification with solar panels with the inputs that we have with using biochar in combination with, with compost and other carbon positive inputs carbon assimilation inputs that would reduce our footprint. So excited about that area. One of our other challenges from trying to become positive is that we do ship our fruit. We don't air freight because you know, that's a material impact and yeah, really, really hard to get your carbon footprint down when you're, when you're air freighting. But even shipping while it's relatively low, given the distance the, the fruit travels, it's a bit more of a challenge. The shipping fleet has a long life. 50 plus years for a ship. The technology isn't really in the ships today from an electrification perspective, so that the evolution of the shipping part of our supply chain will be a bit of a challenge. We did however at the start of this year do a biofuel test to see how well biofuel would work as an alternative within in our existing shipping network and yeah, successfully took our first ship based on biofuel up into the Singapore market at the start of this year and even had all the ship then emptied and trucked around in China by electric EV trucks. So that was a good example that, that part of our supply chain, we can potentially reduce the impact of from a carbon emissions perspective quite significantly. Nice. And looking ahead, if zag is wildly successful, what does the food system look like in 2035? Ooh, that's a great question. Food wise, we from, from a prediction of the future 2035. The way we're tracking, you'd have to say we're gonna be in a, in a far warmer climate. I don't think 2035 will see us doing anything other than having a warmer climate at the way the world is tracking. So from our perspective, we will have had to have some good mitigation in, in place. Yeah, more, yeah, different cultivars that are literally more climate tolerant than we've had before. Our growing systems will have to be more tolerant to heavy rain. Where yeah, need to have that drainage for that heavy deluge you would expect in the warmer climate with the, you know, warmer atmosphere. Being more atmospheric rivers seems to be one of the phrases that getting a lot more of these days. And ultimately we'll need to try to also continue to contribute to not making the climate warmer again in 2035. I'm hoping the biochar example will work. I expect electrification will be far more mainstream throughout our entire supply chain. I imagine it'll still be hard, even in 2035 to find electrification in the in the shipping industry. But yeah, I'm hoping that some of the ships, at least as a percentage of that shipping will be available. And, you know, we will be, in the position to be able to selectively choose those lower emission shipping options over the, yeah, older ships that'll still be in the network being used by others. So hopefully that helps stimulate the uptake of that low carbon shipping emissions pathways. I think it's, yeah, it will be really interesting to see what the geopolitics is doing in 2035. That, yeah, I can personally see that climate change will be having an impact on geopolitics come 2035 if sea levels do rise. And that ends up with some sort of national displacement challenges around the world. So, yeah. The socioeconomics of the world may impact on our supply chain as well, but really hard to predict what that looks like. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For people who are listening who might be in the climate tech or agri innovation space, what should they know before applying to the fund? You know, what's your one line pitch to them? Yeah. We're here. We've got some money to support your interest in your technology application to Kiwi fruit. We think it's relatively low risk. We will assimilate the risk and do a pilot at our cost with you. And we have some really talented people. We have an end to end value chain that can understand the impact of your technology from, you know right down starting from a genetics end right through to the consumer to understand the value of your technology and we can work with you to evolve it. And we're really comfortable that you can take your technology and work with other industries around the world to do good things with that as well. So, really interested in anyone who's interested in working with us to get hold of us. My name, bryan.Parkes@zespri.com or at zespri.com/zag fund. If you're really interested in putting in the application, just give us a call. We've got some great guys that we work with. Amazingly talented. I'm sure you'd enjoy working with us and we'd love working with you. Great. I was more than one line. But Yes. not to worry. Not to worry. A field question for you, if you could have any person or character, alive or dead, real or fictional as a champion for sustainable food production, who would it be and why? Left field answer. I would have the AI Super Einstein of the future on our side. I do hope that we can, through super intelligence, do amazing stuff in the world that will provide ideas and changes to the planet that no one in history has ever been able to do. And if we can work with them and have them on our side, I think that'll be an, an, an amazing asset and an amazing personality if you could say that to help, help solve our problems and help solve the world's problems.'cause yeah, just solving kiwi fruit doesn't solve our, our problems as humanity. We need the bigger picture to solve with things across the climate as well. Like it very good, long as it's not Skynet, but uh. Yes. Okay. Brian, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I did not ask that you wish I did or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of? Yeah, good question. One of the interesting aspects of being good for people, community and environment is the people side. We are reasonably lucky that kiwi fruit's a biological natural product. So, you know, we can do some good for the environment, although we're exposed to the environment, but we can also do some good for the people around the world with a, a a just a, a, a natural amazingly high nutrient density fruit. We are finding some amazing attributes to the fruit around cognitive abilities to, you know, from a concentration perspective of what Vitamin C can do for you and the high fiber for gut health. It's just an amazing product and, you know, working with us and not just in the climate resilience, but in other areas in the kiwi fruit world, it will be good for the planet and the people. So yeah, really excited that people would be interested in working with us on any other area as well as in the climate space. Fantastic. And Brian, you've given already some of the contact details, but again, just if anyone would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast, where would you have me direct them? Yeah. Zespri.com/zag fund and you'll be able to contact us through there. Okay. And I'll put those links that you mentioned as well in the show notes so everyone has access to them. So, fantastic. Bryan, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Yeah. No, thanks for your time, Tom. It's been you know, great to talk to you and great to be able to engage with your very large audience. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.