Reducing Food Waste In the Supply Chain

Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Agriculture has made tremendous gains in both productivity and efficiency over the years. But it’s still a reality that approximately 40% of our fresh produce gets lost or wasted in the supply chain. Apeel is a company that developed a coating to help with this problem. CEO Luiz Beling says the product has made a big impact.
Beling … “Usually oxidation, oxygen goes into fruits and actually accelerates food to going bad. And we've been able to by providing a coating that is edible, plant-based, to basically slow down eventually the food from going bad, fast and actually giving the fruit, a few more days to live in. By doing that, what it does is it actually, it potentially reduces, how much thrown away throughout the supply chain. Very impactful. It's used primarily on about eight different categories: avocados, the citrus, limes, lemons, mandarins, oranges, it can be used on vine veg. It can be used on mangoes and a bunch of fruits, but it does. It gives retailers and suppliers more time to move the fruit through the supply chain and gives consumers extra time to consume it.”
Apeel has now also moved into digitizing ripeness throughout the supply chain. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s report on that.