I was recently invited to visit Bucher Vaslin in Challones-sur-Loire (France). Bucher Vaslin
is a global company responsible for manufacturing equipments for wine production. Preparing the grape, sorting, pressing, filtering, they touch every aspect of wine production (post-harvest). Their optical sorting equipment uses machine learning to constantly improve its sorting capabilities and therefore reduce waste.See Video
By introducing new technologies Vaslin has recently expanded its already sizeable share of the Global Winery equipment segment, selling and customizing equipments to names such as: Maison Lafite, E&J Gallo, Veuve Clicquot, Mondavi and Yellow Tail.
By installing IoT into their new equipment line has allowed Vaslin to troubleshoot their machines located at costumer site, globally and in real time. This is essential at harvest time when wine production can not stop, specially in France where producers are highly verticalized and in order for them to maintain their “appellation” they can not share equipment.
Vaslin envisions that IoT as a service (alerts and services) will really change the way they operate and generate revenue by really participating with the client on the solution process. This is the essence of data impacting businesses. The interesting caveat is that by streamlining the whole process allows wine producers to focus more of their time on marketing and sales, specially relevant to small to mid-size producers.
Knowledge will therefore create other businesses. Next step is to use data as a service by benchmarking their own information for the benefit of the Global winery community. Salut !
Thiago Terzi is the founder of The Commodity Innovation Lab, a collaborative think tank that advises Global Agriculture companies willing to expand business strategy from data strategy.