FRESHTRAY SIGNED

Project "FRESHTRAY" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

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Map

 Project objective

In the EU28, 5% of the fresh fruits and vegetables (FF&V) yearly traded never make it to the supermarket shelves due to spoilage. This means a waste of 3.9 Mt of food and the loss of 8,970 M€. FF&V spoilage is caused by the contamination of micro-organisms activity (bacteria and fungi) and the F&V’s release of ethylene gas. We have developed FreshTray a cost-effective solution to significantly diminish FF&V discards in Europe. FreshTray is a multi-active cardboard packaging to extend the shelf-life of fresh FF&V by 40%. It consists on the application of a patented multi-active coating – made of natural substances – over the inner surface of the cardboard. This coating has proved antimicrobial, antioxidant and ethylene scavenger functions over the F&V contained in the packaging. We have successfully tested the solution in tomato and pepper. Besides its effectiveness and the price, there are two key additional advantages of our solution against our competitors: (i) easy implementation by users and (ii) versatility of the solution that can be adapted to any FF&V company need. F&V companies will be willing to adopt our solution, since it (i) will provide them more flexibility and bargaining power, (ii) will increase their competitiveness against regular products, (iii) will increase their benefits and (iv) will loss on average 50% less of F&V along the supply chain. In our company SAECO – cardboard packaging manufacturers since 1974 – we enjoy a privilege location close to more than 600 target users (some of them are current customers), since we are based in the south-east of Spain, a region known as the “European’s orchard”. FreshTray will be first launched in Spain and in further stages of commercialization we will reach other EU28 countries. This project will give us the possibility to add value to our products and to open new markets. We will upgrade from selling cardboard, to market advanced multi-active packaging solutions to F&V industries.

 Publications