UK food technology company, It’s Fresh!, has created a way to extend the shelf life of fresh produce and therefore reduce the amount of food that is wasted.
Called Infinite, the technology that has been developed by the company is a film packaging solution, which can be printed onto existing packaging for fruit and vegetables to prolong shelf life. This also means that more packaging is not necessary for retailers and companies to preserve fresh food for longer.
Simon Lee, the co-founder of It’s Fresh!™, said: “We are a nation of fresh fruit lovers, and are used to being able to buy our favourites all year round, whatever the season. This creates huge challenges for farmers, importers and supermarkets globally to keep produce fresh in transit. There is a big debate about food packaging at the moment.
“The reality is that the fresh food industry does need packaging. Ours is what we would call purposeful packaging, which is genuinely helping to reduce food wastage and which will in turn reduce the amount of packaging needed overall as the produce lasts longer.”
Company trials of Infinite indicated that the shelf life of strawberries was increased by 50%; trials on blueberries meant that waste was reduced by up to 40%; and the shelf life of bananas was increased by up to 2-3 days.
Infinite works by absorbing the natural ripening hormone, ethylene, to retain the quality and freshness of fruit and vegetables for longer.
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