VegMech Webinar Highlights Packaging and Harvesting Robots

In March 2025, VegMech hosted a webinar with growers and technology manufacturers to discuss how robotic harvesting solutions could reduce input costs such as energy, labour, chemicals and fertilisers. The VegMech programme, officially known as the Advanced Vegetable Mechanization Programme, is an initiative funded by HORT Innovation in partnership with the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, Farm Concepts and GOFAR.

VegMech is an initiative designed to reduce the Australian vegetable industry’s high input costs and labour dependencies through adoption of automation and mechanization — with the goal of improving grower profitability and the overall competitiveness of Australian vegetable farms. VegMech aims to reduce barriers to new technology by providing growers with access to new technology and opportunities to interact with manufacturers — through field days, showcase events, international study tours, and webinars.

The webinar included two growers, Adam Ballan, General Manager at Australian-based farming company Farms Fresh Select and James Rome, Head of Agriculture at East Scotland Growers.

“Labour is a major component of getting vegetables in a box into a supermarket,” said Ballan, whose company grows baby gem, coze (romaine) and iceberg lettuce, baby broccoli, cauliflower, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels Sprouts — across about 300 hectares.

Rome echoed Ballan’s comment and said about 40-50% of their crop cost is labour and reducing labour costs is a motivating factor for his organisation. East Scotland Growers includes 15 members with 18,000 total hectares growing primarily broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts.

Both lettuce and brassicas require “stoop labour” where workers manually harvest crops with a knife while bent over. A dwindling workforce willing to manually harvest crops is a significant challenge for vegetable growers around the world, and a reliance on manual labour makes the industry vulnerable to fluctuations in worker availability and drives up operational expenses.

Broccoli Harvesting Robot Reduces Labour Costs

Karl Thomas, General Manager at AHS (Automated Harvesting Solutions), presented a robotic broccoli harvester that can be operated by only two people. One drives the harvester tractor and the other drives the bin tractor.

The machine’s vision system evaluates each broccoli plant and decides whether to harvest it. The system can detect defects such as cat eye, pin rot, crown damage and other issues. Broccoli that meets the criteria for harvesting, based on a predetermined size and lack of defects, is gathered by an end effector and placed on a conveyance system.

Mechanical harvesting reduces overhead costs such as training, service trailers, latrines, housing, and a team to hire and supervise the workers, Thomas noted. He also mentioned benefits of robotic broccoli harvesting beyond reducing labour expenses.

“You’re settling your fixed cost for a long time. Our harvester will last a minimum of five years, up to 10 or maybe 15 years. So you've set your harvesting cost in today's dollars,” Thomas said.

“There's also a sanitation piece,” Thomas added. “Each morning, the growers clean the harvester and sanitize it. There's no human interaction with the broccoli crown until it's back at the packing station. The harvester doesn't take lunch breaks, doesn't take restroom breaks, and those types of things. So it stays sanitized all day long.”

Automated Broccoli, Celery, and Lettuce Packaging

The panelists also discussed challenges around processing harvested crops for various customers. Ron van de Pavert, CEO of BrimaPack, presented his company’s integrated harvesting and packaging solutions.

BrimaPack designs, builds and commissions harvesting and packaging solutions for vegetables, primarily broccoli, iceberg lettuce, as well as other round produce and celery.

According to Van de Pavert, BrimaPack’s broccoli packaging solutions can extend shelf life by five to seven days at ambient temperature and its iceberg lettuce packaging provides an additional two to three days of shelf life. BrimaPack’s machines have a pallet-sized footprint and 10 units working in tandem can process upwards of 12,000 heads per hour. The equipment can run on a battery or hydrogen combustion engine.

The equipment is designed for indoor and outdoor use. In the field, workers can feed hand-picked produce into the machines.

“Seven auto wrappers can handle almost 8000 heads per hour. The productivity per man-hour can be over 400 heads,” Van de Pavert said. He estimates BrimaPack’s solutions can generate labour cost savings of nearly 20%.

BrimaPack recently launched a celery packaging machine. Workers feed celery into the machine, which trims, washes, dries, pairs and flow-wraps the celery.

Lastly, Van de Pavert described how BrimaPack's equipment supports precision farming. “Every single head that's wrapped gets a timestamp, a GPS code and some technical information. This is automatically uploaded into the cloud, so the grower can import it into a file management programme.”

Looking Ahead: Challenges and Opportunities

The panel discussed how the industry could make automated solutions more user-friendly for growers and increase adoption. Van de Pavert said he would like to see seed companies develop varieties that are easier for robots to harvest. Thomas agreed, stating “The harvester cannot see a broccoli crown if it's occluded with too much leaf matter. There are varieties that stand up a little bit above the canopy and are easier for the vision system to see.”

Rome noted, “Unfortunately, not all of them suit every geographical growing region and conditions. Our single biggest variety is probably not conducive to automated harvest. It's a low set head [with] lots of leaves.”

Ballan said educating consumers might be part of the process. “At the moment, broccoli on the shelf has a perfect crown with no leaf on it. But if we can cut broccoli with an automated harvester and lower the price, hopefully that works for them...even if it has a couple leaves.”

Farmers Ballan and Rome urged manufacturers to develop robust, commercially viable solutions. Ballan highlighted the importance of after-sales support and using commonly available replacement parts. “If sensors go or there's a problem with RAMs, we might have to become our own technicians. But hopefully not!”

Watch the Webinar On Demand

The 80-minute webinar is available to view online as are previous VegMech programmes. Learn more about VegMech at ausveg.com.au.