Dominic Myers has worn many hats in his career – from engineer and manager at Moog Inc. to a global food sorting corporation to consulting for local manufacturers.
He’s bringing that experience to Packhouse Technology Solutions, a “robots-as-a-service” startup company that is seeking to solve a major challenge in the perishable foods industry.
The problem: Sortation centers move fruits and vegetables through highly automated processes until the very end of the line, when a human picks out the good from the bad.
But with a tremendously competitive workforce market, operations across the U.S. are running well under capacity, Myers says.
The solution: a software platform that helps robots do that very work, using sensors and ultimately cameras.
Packhouse tech will integrate with existing machinery and be a gateway to field service and engineering support.
“We’re offering something brand new to the industry – a task-based smart software service that integrates with the equipment they already have,” Myers said.
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Myers co-founded Packhouse with Ron Barone and Ron Brown, and they've hooked into various entrepreneurial support services in Western New York. The firm is a Launch NY client and recently completed the University at Buffalo’s I-Corps regional course. Packhouse is in talks with local angel investors and private funders outside of the region to fund its go-to-market push in the coming year.
Packhouse is already getting customer feedback through a few early adopters, but the key to scaling will be to move from custom projects to more of an off-the-shelf product. The team is targeting spring 2022 for that.
The “robots-as-a-service” model is a take on popular software-as-a-service enterprises, which earn regular fees on tech products they license to their customers. Myers said the packhouse industry is used to buying and using capital equipment, so customer education will be part of the process.
The grand vision – where autonomous robots can do sortation work when and where they’re needed – is a major business opportunity.
“We’ve got customers with a massive amount of fruit that isn’t going anywhere because they can’t find the people to pack it,” Myers said. “Our solution is getting a great response so far.”
