The Rising Star award took on a new format for 2026, honouring an individual shaping the future of the industry through leadership, initiative, and innovation. The Hive Award went to Sam Musson, who founded Zest Element and HarvestResQ to tackle the food waste crisis in Australia.
Musson founded Zest Element to create a natural fruit ingredient to be used in baking. Through hands-on product development and small-scale manufacturing, she developed processes that convert fresh fruit into shelf-stable powders while retaining flavour, colour and nutrients.
This work led to the creation of Harvest ResQ, an on-farm, off-grid dehydration solution designed to help growers recover value from produce that would otherwise be downgraded, diverted to livestock feed, or lost from the supply chain.
Building on this foundation, she is now developing the Harvest ResQ Hub – a world-first, mobile dehydration system designed to operate directly on farms. The hub integrates solar power, heat pump dehydration technology and modular processing equipment to create an energy-efficient, moveable processing unit that can be deployed where surplus crops occur.
By locating dehydration closer to the farm, the hub reduces transport costs, extends the usable life of perishable produce and allows growers to convert surplus crops into stable ingredient products.
