10/30/08 Adding the Label

Adding the Label. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Everytime I go to the grocery store I stand and wonder about those little stickers on each individual piece of fruit and what person is responsible for putting those on. Well you know that it's actually a machine that does the work and Joe Sleiman, President of Accu-Label International was at the PMA's Fresh Summit talking about their new products. SLEIMAN: We're a total solutions company. We provide all sorts of solutions for the packing houses. Primarily Accu-Label is focused on the labeling of fruits and vegetables but we create all sorts of labeling, packaging and automation solutions. They have also come out with a hand labeler for third world countries that use manual labor. Accu-Label has a history of being environmentally friendly. SLEIMAN: All our labels are biodegradable paper. It's a renewable resource. It's a thin, high quality paper that conforms beautifully to the fruit and the consumers can peel it off in one piece so it's not flaky. The support liner is discarded is a recyclable PET liner so you've got a completely environmentally friendly product. Sleiman also says they are working to find solutions for traceability. SLEIMAN: What we find is the product is unloaded from the carton which is usually coded with a day code, a lot code or grower ID. But once it's packed and in the grocery store in a bin you don't know where that individual product came from. What we're able to do with this unit; this will print the information based on everything from a simple lot code or date code to the complete product identification including bar codes. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.