What has happened since the Awards?
The biggest visible milestone has obviously been launching Zest Element into Coles nationally with our lemon, orange and strawberry powders. Seeing something that started in such a small way now sitting on supermarket shelves across Australia has been surreal.
The response has been incredible. Demand has accelerated much faster than I anticipated, which means the challenge now isn’t proving that people want the product – it’s building the infrastructure and supply chain quickly enough to keep up with them.
Behind the scenes, the bigger project has been Harvest ResQ and taking dehydration closer to where the fruit is grown.
Receiving $500,000 through the Coles Nurture Fund to develop that concept was obviously a huge milestone. It gave us the opportunity to move beyond talking about what could be possible and start working through what commercial-scale, decentralised processing looks like.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in regional New South Wales working with commercial dehydration equipment capable of processing around 1.5 tonnes of fresh fruit per run. I’m working alongside the equipment, processing tonnes of fruit and learning where the bottlenecks are, what can be automated and what needs to change to make the model scalable.
We were selected as a finalist in the Sunshine Coast Biosphere Awards and the 2026 FaBA Food & Beverage Startup of the Year as part of The University of Queensland Entrepreneurship and Innovation Awards. And ABC Landline featured our story and the work we’re doing around food waste and AgTech.
We’re also starting to see growing interest from overseas, including Malaysia and the UAE. That’s been particularly exciting because it reinforces that the problem we’re trying to solve isn’t uniquely Australian.
At The Hive Awards I was talking about what I wanted to build. Now I’m building it.
Are you seeing a change in growers and industry since you began?
Absolutely. I'm now getting calls every week from growers across different crops asking, “Can you help us?”
That is probably the biggest change I've seen.
When I first started, I was the one having to explain the problem, explain dehydration and convince people that there could be value in produce that wasn’t making it through the traditional fresh supply chain.
Now growers are finding me and not for one particular crop or region. The conversations are coming from across different industries, usually with the same underlying problem – they have perfectly good produce that, for one reason or another, doesn’t have a market.
That’s also why Harvest ResQ has become so important. There is clearly no shortage of fruit or produce needing a solution. The challenge is having enough processing capacity, in the right places, when growers need it.
One of the questions I keep coming back to is: why spend thousands transporting water? Process the crop where it’s grown.
Fresh produce is predominantly water. If we can process it closer to the farm, we dramatically reduce the weight and volume being transported, extend its life from something highly perishable into a shelf-stable ingredient, and open entirely new markets for it.
For me, those weekly calls are probably the clearest indication that the industry is changing. I’m no longer trying to convince people there’s a problem – they’re calling me looking for the solution.
What have been the challenges?
Ironically, one of our biggest hurdles right now is growth. We spent years trying to prove there was a market for these products. Now demand is growing faster than our existing production capacity.
Scaling food manufacturing is very different from making more product. Suddenly you’re dealing with tonnes rather than kilograms, equipment capacity, labour, automation, logistics, food safety and an agricultural supply chain that doesn't necessarily behave according to a nice, neat forecast!
But that challenge is also forcing us to solve exactly the problem I've wanted to solve all along.
Rather than simply building an enormous central factory and trucking fresh fruit hundreds or thousands of kilometres to it, I’m working towards a decentralised model where commercial dehydration can happen much closer to the source.
And I'm learning by physically doing it. That can mean driving 13 hours from Queensland to regional New South Wales, working with a commercial 1.5-tonne dehydration system for several days, then coming home and working out how we make the next version better.
It’s certainly not the glamorous side of getting a product into a major supermarket, but it’s probably the most important work we're doing.
What is your timeframe and goal?
The immediate priority is scaling production to meet the demand we now have while continuing to develop and prove the Harvest ResQ model.
The next stage is getting the commercial equipment we’re currently working with relocated to the Sunshine Coast and continuing the automation and development work there.
From there, the goal is decentralised processing that can ultimately be deployed into growing regions.
Rather than asking farmers to send tonnes of fresh produce hundreds or thousands of kilometres to a processor, we take the processing capability closer to them.
Ultimately, I want to build a network of scalable dehydration solutions across Australia and, eventually, internationally.
The growing interest we’re already seeing from places including Malaysia and the UAE has made me realise how transferable the model could potentially be. Different regions have different crops, but the underlying problem is remarkably similar.
For me, success isn’t measured by how many tonnes of fruit Zest Element can process in one factory.
It’s how many tonnes of fruit never become waste in the first place because we’ve created the infrastructure and the market to use them.
And importantly, I want growers to participate in the value that’s created from that fruit.
And what motivates you to keep going?
Probably a combination of stubbornness, curiosity and an inability to accept “that’s just how the industry works” as an answer.
I’ve always believed there is enormous value sitting in produce that doesn’t make it through the traditional fresh supply chain.
For the first few years, I was trying to prove there was a market for it. Coles has helped prove the market.
And that’s why I don't really see getting onto a supermarket shelf as the end goal. I see it as evidence.
If consumers will buy these products at scale, we can create demand for more Australian fruit. If we can create that demand, we can justify processing more fruit. And if we can put that processing closer to growers, we have an opportunity to change what happens to produce that currently has nowhere to go.
That’s the part that keeps me going.
