New Holland and Bluewhite Announced Strategic Partnership
NEW HOLLAND, Pa., June 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- New Holland, a brand of CNH (NYSE: CNH), and Bluewhite, a leading autonomous technology company enabling AI-driven autonomous farming, announced today a multi-phase partnership to collaborate on distribution, manufacturing and integration of Bluewhite's autonomous solutions for New Holland tractors in North America. This partnership will enable New Holland tractors to operate fully autonomously in orchards, vineyards and other specialty crop operations.
Bluewhite, formerly Blue White Robotics, drives the growth of resilient farms by bringing sustainable autonomous innovation to permanent crop growers worldwide. The company's AI-driven autonomous farm solution leverages AI, sensor fusion, advanced vehicle integration and precision implements control to help growers manage their fleets and data — and, ultimately, produce more with less. Bluewhite works with over 20 leading permanent crop growers, enabling autonomous farming on multiple crops and tractor models across 150,000 acres in the U.S. Founded in 2017 by Ben Alfi, Yair Shahar and Aviram Shmueli, Bluewhite is headquartered in Tel Aviv with offices in Fresno, California.
"We're incredibly excited about collaborating with CNH and New Holland to accelerate the adoption of autonomous technologies in the field that not only improve productivity and profitability for growers but also promote safe and sustainable methods of producing food," said Ben Alfi, Chief Executive Officer, Bluewhite. "Our long-term partnership with CNH and New Holland combining leading autonomous technology with the best tractors and harvesters in the orchards and vineyards sector is a milestone in achieving our mission of making cutting-edge innovation accessible to the agriculture sector. We have an exciting journey ahead of us and we look forward to working with partners like CNH and New Holland to continue bringing value to our customers and growers everywhere."
The proven capabilities of Bluewhite in orchards and vineyards bolsters New Holland's strategy to bring autonomous solutions across all segments it serves, especially in the specialty crop market. Building on our parent company CNH's acquisitions of Raven, Augmenta, and Hemisphere, which are driving New Holland's autonomy offerings for row crop and broad acre farmers, Bluewhite's unique technology helps New Holland customers address immediate challenges, such as labor shortages and rising operational costs in the specialty crop market. Depending on the specific use case, Bluewhite technology has proven to reduce operational costs by up to 85% through a combination of savings in inputs, labor and maintenance costs.