Hectre walked away from the 2026 NZ Hi-Tech Awards Gala with two trophies on Friday night: Hi-Tech Kamupene Māori o te Tau (Māori Company of the Year) and Most Innovative Hi-Tech Agritech Solution. Matty Blomfield and the Hectre team have been building a serious business out of New Zealand for years, and the room recognised it.
Hectre wins Māori Company of the Year and Best Agritech Solution
The Māori Company of the Year award sits alongside Hectre’s Emerging Company finalist nod as a recognition of the company Matty has built, not only the technology. Hectre’s growth has been deliberate, founder-led, and tied to a clear view of what fruit growers actually need from software and from imaging hardware.
The Agritech win, in a category with strong New Zealand competition, confirms what the international customer base already shows: Hectre’s fruit scanning and orchard management software is genuinely best-in-class for the problem it solves. Customers in 22 countries, more than 3.8 billion pieces of fruit scanned, revenue growing at roughly 100% a year, and an oversubscribed $12 million Series A behind them. Two awards in a single evening is what that looks like when the wider industry catches up to where Hectre has already been operating.
Matty spoke with NZ Herald’s Herald Now the morning after the Gala about the wins and what’s next for Hectre.
Astute Access and Sea-Flux on the finalist stage
Punakaiki Fund’s other two finalists, Astute Access and Sea-Flux, were also on the night. Astute was up in Manufacturing against Fisher & Paykel Technologies and Aroa Biosurgery, which is the kind of company you want to be measured against. Sea-Flux was a finalist in Startup Company of the Year on the back of more than 1,300 vessels now using its software worldwide. Neither took home a trophy this year, but both belong in those categories, and the recognition matters in its own right.
A record-entry year at the NZ Hi-Tech Awards
The Hi-Tech Awards had more than 300 entries this year, the highest in the awards’ history. Three of our companies in the finalist lineup, with two trophies between them, is a result we’re proud to be associated with. The work behind those trophies was done by the founders and their teams over many years. Our job, and our continuing privilege, is to back companies like Hectre, Astute, and Sea-Flux with the kind of capital that lets them keep building on a timeline that suits the business they are building.
Congratulations to Matty and the Hectre team, and to the teams at Astute Access and Sea-Flux for getting to the final stage of one of the most competitive Hi-Tech Awards in years.
