Select Harvest Presented Business Highlights In 2019 AgFood - Round Table By PAC

Select Harvests Limited (ASX:SHV), based in Thomastown, Australia, is a vertically integrated nut and health food company engaged in horticulture, orchard management (owned, leased, and joint ventured), processing, sales and marketing.

It is one of the leading almond producers in the country and operates through two primary business segments- Food Division and Almond Division with assets in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Besides, India, China, Europe, Middle East and few other countries in Asia are some of the favourable export destinations for the company’s products which are sold under the brands – Sunsol, NuVitality, Lucky and Soland in the retail markets; and Renshaw and Allinga Farms in the industrial and wholesale markets at home and abroad. Â

In the 2019 AgFood - Round Table organised by the PAC Partners on Precision Farming, the company presented the business update and a brief of its efforts into implementing precision farming. Essentially, Precision farming, also known as satellite agriculture is an advanced approach to farm management that employs information technology (IT) to ensure optimum health and productivity for the crops and soil.

The presentation highlights the investments in technology to monitor daily plant stress by deploying a range of sensors, developed by Israeli Ag. Analytics Tech company, onto trees in the orchards. Upon the successful completion of the trialling of Phytech’s system that began in 2015-16, Phytech’s plant monitoring system was rolled out across 3,500 hectares which comprises 60% of the mature trees in 2018. The company believes having detailed data on their trees could help them optimise a whole range of inputs like water, labour, fertiliser, energy use and ultimately the yield and therefore diminish cost per kilogram.

Besides, the company has also been using aerial imaging wherein high-resolution images with various wavelengths are captured and algorithmically analysed by software, thus revealing diseases, parasites, weeds etc. The benefits include assessing distribution/variability of water and plant health across the orchards.

In addition, Select Harvests has also invested in a fully automated control system to reduce QA cost and achieve increased accuracy. For this, they have deployed machines developed by Qcify, a San Francisco, California based quality control solutions provider.

Besides, the year so far provided a favourable growing season, unlike last year. As for the business update, the demand for plant-based products has been growing in the domestic and across Asian markets, specifically China. With high water pricing, the company’s procurement policies, further productivity cost savings and improved almond hull returns from selling into the stockfeed markets has offset some of the increased water cost. The industrial division delivered strong revenues.

Select Harvest is listed as SHV on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) with a market capitalisation of AUD 578.55 million and approximately 95.47 million outstanding shares. With the close of the trading session on February 6th, 2019, the SHV stock was trading at a market price of AUD 6.060, up 4.303% indicating an intra-day gain of AUD 0.250. Today, the stock is trading at AUD 6.120, up 0.99% (as at 1:29 PM AEST, 7 February 2019).

Over the past six months, the stock has generated a negative return of 1.30%. The stock has provided a negative YTD return of 1.46%.

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