Introduction
Hall Hunter Partnership (HHP) is one of the UK’s leading soft-fruit growers, supplying major retailers such as Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and Tesco. With operations spread across farms and glasshouse sites, HHP needed a more reliable, long-term approach to consolidating agricultural, operational and sensor data. To improve decision-making and support rapid reporting, the organisation turned to WhereScape to build a modern, automated data warehouse.
Pre-WhereScape Challenges
- Fragmented data landscape: important insight was locked in Packstar, Harvest Manager, spreadsheets and sensor systems, making consistency difficult.
- Slow, manual reporting: complex Excel workbooks with heavy formulas required multiple saved versions and caused long refresh times.
- Limited historical storage: sensor readings could only be retained for 30 days, preventing important multi-year trend analysis.
- Hard-to-compare operations: variations across fields, micro-climates and crop plans made like-for-like analysis nearly impossible.
Why WhereScape?
HHP needed a centralised, automated data warehouse capable of ingesting diverse agricultural and operational data at scale. WhereScape offered a proven, automated code-generation approach that ensured consistency, best practices, and rapid development: enabling a small IT team to deliver far faster than manual methods would allow.
The Solution
Automated Data Warehouse Build
WhereScape RED automated the creation of the SQL code and scripts required to build HHP’s new centralised repository. Standardised, well-documented pipelines ensured governance, consistency and scalable development.
Central Repository for Long-Term Insight
The new warehouse retains many years of operational and sensor data, enabling historical comparisons that were previously unattainable with only 30-day storage limits.
Support for Future Sensor Expansion
As HHP installs more sensors to track pH, temperature, humidity and other environmental factors, WhereScape structures and stores these datasets reliably for advanced agronomy analytics.
“With WhereScape, you are emboldened to experiment and process data in ways in which you would previously have thought impossible. Now we dare!”
– Alex Gooi, Business Analyst, Hall Hunter Partnership
Results
🚀 Single Source of Truth
- One central repository consolidates all data sources.
- Consistent definitions improve cross-team reporting.
- Data transformations are transparent and easy to adjust.
🚀 Mobile-Friendly Summaries
- Large transactional tables are condensed for mobile use.
- Older 20-minute report refreshes now take seconds.
- Calibrated schemas support on-field staff and mobile devices.
🚀 Like-for-Like Farm Comparisons
- Fields aligned within a common timeline for fair comparison.
- Running totals and milestones allow yield evaluation.
- Harvest strategies can now be reviewed and optimised.
🚀 Inventory Tracking and Forecasting
- Historical tracking helps maintain an effective stock plan.
- Accurate visibility of 330 daily packed product lines.
- Supports crop forecasting and accounting initiatives.
🚀 Future Sensor Analytics
- Climate, nutrient, light and soil moisture data will be unified.
- Creates a single environmental data silo for agronomy insight.
“We have been delighted with the results WhereScape has achieved for us so far! Now that we are reporting from one central data warehouse, we are able to capture and store critical information whatever the data source and, as a result, provide more accurate and consistent reports across multiple business areas.”
– Alex Gooi, Business Analyst, Hall Hunter Partnership
Data Warehouse Automation for Agriculture
HHP’s fast-paced growing and harvesting cycles require continuous insight into labour productivity, crop quality and operational efficiency. Automation ensures that critical data from farm operations, packing processes and environmental sensors is processed consistently without manual intervention.
Long-Term Data Retention for Better Agronomy Decisions
The ability to store years of sensor readings — from soil pH to humidity patterns — allows agronomy teams to build long-term trend profiles. This helps identify optimal harvest times, understand crop reactions to weather shifts and plan future planting strategies more accurately.
Field-to-Glasshouse Data Integration
By creating a unified system capable of ingesting data from both traditional field environments and controlled glasshouse facilities, HHP gains the flexibility to compare very different growing systems in a single analytical framework.
Scaling a Lean IT Team
WhereScape’s automation allowed a small IT team to deliver output equivalent to four developers. This efficiency gain was essential in a business that experiences seasonal workforce expansion and requires rapid response to changing agricultural conditions.
“Previously, we could only store 30 days of field and glasshouse sensor readings but, in order to build up an accurate picture of historical comparisons and trends, we needed a solution that could retain the new sensor data for several years or more.”
– Alex Gooi, Business Analyst, Hall Hunter Partnership
