Stevie-winner Hectre is a fruit technology company offering a full suite of orchard management modules plus a computer vision AI early fruit sizing tool, so users can gather accurate fruit size data at scale and with speed.
Established in 2016, Hectre helps clients optimize food production by enabling digitization of key processes and access to accurate, rich data for better-informed operations decision-making. They offer easy-to-use orchard technologies that deliver value to growers and packers—whether they be small family-owned businesses or large-scale enterprises.
Product Design & Development
Size is a major determinant of export sales. Industry needs analysis identified a major problem caused by a lack of early fruit sizing data. Growers and packhouses had to make critical sales, storage, and packing decisions based on minute-size samples, as manual early sizing processes were extremely time-intensive and costly.
When the wrong size fruit is selected for packing and sale (due to lack of size data), huge packing operations come to a standstill, causing enormous costs and non-fulfillment of orders, negatively impacting reputations, and causing fruit waste. 
Hectre harnessed the power of machine learning to develop the Spectre early fruit AI app. Spectre enables growers and packers to size a large sample of fruit by taking a photo of it with a simple iPad; users receive accurate size samples and color detection results within seconds.
The computer vision technology means users don't need expensive equipment, and clients can add unlimited users and images within the app. Spectre's high accuracy—whether a user is in an orchard, in receiving, or anywhere else—has been proven against multi-million dollar grader machines, not just lab tests.
In December 2020, Spectre for Apples was launched. Demand from the citrus market and premium cherry market followed. Spectre for Citrus and Cherries have now been released to New Zealand, the United States, Australia, and Canada. Spectre for Pears was then released in December 2022.
The Spectre app is now being used by some of the largest fruit companies in the United States, including Washington Fruit & Produce, Sage Fruit, Borton Fruit, and Monson Fruit.
Customer Service & Personnel
Hectre has a strong dedication to the success of its customers. They do in-person implementation at their property whenever possible.
Recognizing the importance of strong onboarding, training, and support in an industry that has not historically had much exposure to technology support, Hectre established a Customer Success team and provides bilingual tech and support in person, via phone, and online. An extensive online knowledge base for customers who wish to troubleshoot independently before contacting support has also been created.
To support current and future employees, they created paid internship pathways, which immerse tech grads into Hectre’s culture with opportunities to work on fulfilling Hectre projects. This has enabled Hectre to acquire talent despite tight labor markets.
Hectre won two Gold Stevie Awards for Most Innovative Startup of the Year - Business Product Industries and Most Innovative Tech Startup of the Year - Software in the 2023 Asia-Pacific Stevie® Awards.
Interested in entering the 2024 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards?
