British Sugar, the UK’s sole processor of the beet sugar crop, is working with leading satellite analytics company, Rezatec, to help achieve greater efficiencies in their supply chain and processing factories who are providing field-level crop classification of sugar beet and other crops.
British Sugar set out to achieve better visibility across catchment areas where farmers are currently planting sugar beet and the acreage that is achieved, as well as visualising which fields are closest to each respective factory using a distance-travelled metric.
Nick Morris at British Sugar said: “Rezatec was tasked with a preliminary piece of work to apply its crop classification techniques to validate fields growing sugar beet. We set the bar at 95% accuracy and we were very pleased that Rezatec was able to achieve 100% from the test data.”
Following the initial work, to meet British Sugar’s requirements, Rezatec is deploying its Supply Optimisation product, part of the Harvest SAT solution. Using both optical and radar satellite imagery, and applying its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) approach for crop classification, Rezatec can identify sugar beet and other arable crops within catchment areas and measure the acreage organised into five-mile radial bands from four factory locations around the UK.
Mr Morris added: “Using Rezatec’s innovative Supply Optimisation product, we can achieve greater efficiencies in our supply chain by optimising sugar beet to closest factory locations thereby reducing costs associated with harvest, e.g. haulage.”
Tim Vallings, chief commercial officer at Rezatec said : “Working with British Sugar to help optimise their supply chain and factory operations is a perfect example of how the application of satellite data combined with advanced AI techniques can provide decision support tools that have a tangible payback to the business.”
Rezatec’s Products are delivered through its online, interactive platform, which provides interactive tools such as dashboards, graphs, and maps to allow users to easily view and interrogate complex data analytics to make informed business decisions.
