Robotics Plus was founded in Tauranga in 2009, the fourth business within Steve Saunders’ horticultural solutions portfolio, the Plus Group. It began with a fortuitous meeting between Saunders and then PhD student, Alistair Scarfe. Saunders was on a Zespri Group-organised research trip to Massey University scouting for ingenious solutions to some of the horticulture industry's biggest challenges. “Through the Plus Group we had a world class pollination company,” Saunders says. “I had this idea about how we could robotically pollinate or robotically pick fruit.” Scarfe and Saunders started talking about how to make that exciting vision a reality, and, according to Scarfe, “it’s all really spun out from there.”
