Inventing Better Ways to Grow, Protect, and Value Food
ZEDLAB was created from a simple realisation: food is precious - and far too much of it is wasted before anyone ever gets the chance to enjoy it.
Across orchards, greenhouses, packhouses, and retail shelves, growers put enormous effort into producing high-quality fruit and vegetables. Yet inefficiencies, outdated systems, inconsistent storage, limited materials, and a lack of practical engineering support often mean that perfectly good food never reaches its full value.
We started ZEDLAB because we believe horticulture deserves better tools - and a better future.
Our Story
ZEDLAB was founded by Zac Taylor, an engineer from Hawke’s Bay, and Evie Tan, a food scientist originally from Thailand.
Zac grew up surrounded by orchards, packhouses, and growers — horticulture is part of the fabric of Hawke’s Bay, and part of his family’s history. He spent seasons picking apples, working in packhouses, and seeing how postharvest handling affects quality and returns. Those experiences gave him a deep respect for the work growers put in, and a clear view of the practical challenges they face every day.
As Zac trained and worked as an engineer, he began to notice something: growers face constant, hands-on problems that could be solved with thoughtful design, better systems, and smarter tools — but the capability to build those solutions often doesn’t exist within their reach. The gap between what growers need and what’s available became impossible to ignore.
Evie grew up helping her father run a fruit exporting business in Thailand. From a young age she saw how fruit changes during long journeys — through storage, transport, and international supply chains. She learned how delicate quality can be, and how even small shifts in temperature, time, and handling can impact firmness, flavour, colour, and market value. Her path into food science deepened her understanding of postharvest physiology and the pressures exporters face when trying to deliver perfect fruit across borders.
Together, Zac and Evie saw the same truth from two different sides of the world:
Growers are doing everything right — but the systems and materials around them aren’t keeping up.
They saw crops that took a year to grow lose value in a single stage of handling.
They saw inefficiencies in orchards and packhouses that could be fixed with better tools and engineering.
They saw waste — not because the fruit was bad, but because the systems surrounding it were outdated.
They saw growers innovating on the fly, with no dedicated support.
And they saw that the industry needed more than advice.
It needed people willing to build.
That is why ZEDLAB was created:
to design technology, materials, and systems that help growers protect more of the value they work so hard to create, and reduce waste across the whole food system.
