Trimble Acquires HarvestMark to Provide Food Traceability and Quality Control

Acquisition Enables Trimble to Provide Food Quality Inspection and Food Traceability to Producers, Distribution Centers and Retailers

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Trimble

Apr 22, 2015, 06:30 ET

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 22, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) announced today that it has acquired the assets of HarvestMark®, a provider of food traceability and quality inspection solutions, from YottaMark, Inc. of Redwood City, Calif. HarvestMark is a market leader in delivering insights throughout the fresh food supply chain from farm to fork. Its platform and tools make food data collection efficient, complex information simple to view and prioritize, and provides actionable insights to drive sales and profit. HarvestMark enables food producers, distributors and retailers to meet food safety requirements, build shopper loyalty, secure their supply chain and optimize product freshness and quality. The acquisition of HarvestMark further enhances Trimble's position in Agriculture and Transportation and Logistics within the food supply chain.

The HarvestMark portfolio includes four software-as-a-service products:

PTI & Item Level Traceability is affordable software that enables food producers, retailers and food service companies to comply with the Produce Traceability Initiative and create visibility throughout the supply chain.It provides an easy way to create rich analytics to improve performance from a product's source to the end consumer.
DC Insights is a flexible, ERP agnostic mobile application that prioritizes and guides quality inspections, provides analytics for improved buying and gross margin, and creates visibility in real time with automated performance reports and supplier notifications.
Retail Insights is a lightweight, mobile application that allows retailers, food service companies and food producers to easily collect and synthesize food data, prioritize companies' initiatives and ensure execution of priorities with real time—and trended—information.
Connect is a platform that allows retailers and food producers to engage their customers, share details about particular products and buying practices, suggest recipes and complimentary products, and receive customer feedback.

The food industry is being transformed by demands for greater transparency, quality and safety, creating opportunities to provide meaningful analysis of food from the farm to the fork. HarvestMark provides applications for food producers, distributors and retailers to address these demands to deliver predictably higher quality, fresh food to build buyer loyalty, drive sales and improve profitability.

Coupled with Trimble's Connected Farm™ solution, HarvestMark enables producers to make real-time decisions that improve the quality and safety of fresh food grown on their farms. By monitoring their quality metrics, producers can ensure they are delivering the highest quality fresh food to the retailer while reducing the likelihood and impact of a foodborne health event. When combined with Trimble's portfolio of Agriculture products, producers can achieve better results through cost reduction and higher income from greater fresh food quality.

Today, Trimble serves fresh food transportation and distribution customers through its fleet management, dispatch and driver behavior applications and analytics software from its Transportation and Logistics Divisions, PeopleNet and TMW. These Trimble solutions also integrate with cargo monitoring systems to ensure product freshness during the shipping process. By combining these capabilities with the HarvestMark solutions, Trimble can now offer fresh food transporters, distributors and retailers with visibility into fleet equipment performance, driver effectiveness and cargo origin and handling across the entire supply chain.

"Trimble's acquisition of HarvestMark enables us to provide further benefits to producers and adds new value to distribution centers and food retailers by providing a powerful tool for tracking goods in the food industry," said Mark Harrington, vice president of Trimble. "By combining HarvestMark with our Connected Farm and Transportation and Logistics solutions, we can enable producers, distributors and retailers to coordinate their activities to deliver the best quality foods to consumers. We are also giving our customers unique solutions to help control costs and increase profits in the food production, processing, distribution and retailing industries."

"The HarvestMark acquisition by Trimble enables us to provide customers with increased access to industry-leading technologies," said Charlie Piper, YottaMark CEO, who will join Trimble after the acquisition. "The combination of Trimble and HarvestMark provides innovative solutions in transparency and connectivity throughout the supply chain, enabling food producers and retailers to optimize freshness and quality, build shopper loyalty and meet food safety requirements. We look forward to accelerating the value we provide through Trimble's deep technology portfolio, global footprint and industry leadership."

The HarvestMark business will be reported as part of Trimble's Field Solutions Segment. Financial terms were not disclosed.

About HarvestMark

HarvestMark® is an industry-leading fresh food traceability and insights platform. HarvestMark solutions deliver transparency and unparalleled insight into the fresh food supply chain that drives sales and profit. Designed for a wide range of fresh products, the HarvestMark platform supports industry standard case-level and item-level traceability. HarvestMark Connect extends the platform to include consumer marketing and communication—driving loyalty by connecting farm to fork, speeding food safety communication, and reconnecting shoppers with the people who grow and sell their food. HarvestMark Insights provides on-demand tools and analytics to help optimize quality and freshness. Today, more than 350 companies and over 3,000 farms globally use the HarvestMark platform to power their traceability programs. This translates into more than seven billion packages of fresh food that have been enabled with HarvestMark traceability.

For more details, visit: HarvestMark.com.

About Trimble's Agriculture Division

Trimble Agriculture solutions enable customers to maximize efficiency and reduce chemical and fertilizer inputs while also protecting natural resources and the environment. Trimble's precision agriculture solutions cover all seasons, crops, terrains, and farm sizes, and its brand-agnostic strategy allows farmers to use Trimble products on most vehicles in their fleet—regardless of manufacturer. To enable better decision making, Trimble offers the Connected Farm solution which allows farmers to collect, share, and manage information across their farm in real time. To optimize water use, Trimble provides water solutions for irrigation, drainage, and land leveling. Trimble's product suite includes vehicle and implement guidance and steering, as well as a portfolio of correction options that are the most versatile of their kind in the industry. Additional solutions include an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for aerial imaging and mapping; application control for seed, liquid, and granular products; a harvest solution; and farm management software.

For more information on Trimble Agriculture, visit: www.trimble.com/agriculture.

About Trimble

Trimble applies technology to make field and mobile workers in businesses and government significantly more productive. Solutions are focused on applications requiring position or location—including surveying, construction, agriculture, fleet and asset management, public safety and mapping. In addition to utilizing positioning technologies, such as GPS, lasers and optics, Trimble solutions may include software content specific to the needs of the user. Wireless technologies are utilized to deliver the solution to the user and to ensure a tight coupling of the field and the back office. Founded in 1978, Trimble is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif.

For more information, visit: www.trimble.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding the business operations and prospects of Trimble, including the impact of the HarvestMark acquisition on extending and accelerating Trimble Agriculture and Transportation and Logistics solutions. These forward-looking statements are subject to change, and actual results may materially differ due to certain risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause or contribute to changes in such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to (i) realizing the anticipated benefits of the acquisition, (ii) Trimble's ability to provide food traceability and quality inspection solutions to producers, distributors and retailers involved in the food supply chain, (iii) integrating HarvestMark's solutions with Trimble products and developing more robust solutions for the food supply chain, and (iv) the risks and uncertainties associated with unexpected expenditures or assumed liabilities that may be incurred as a result of the acquisition. More information about potential factors which could affect Trimble's business and financial results is set forth in reports filed with the SEC, including Trimble's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and its annual report on Form 10-K. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to Trimble as of the date hereof, and Trimble assumes no obligation to update such statements.

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SOURCE Trimble