FreshCloud saved the grower approximately $14,400 and continues to fight fruit waste

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Tuesday 11 June 2019

FreshCloud Storage Insights on a smartphone

FreshCloud platform consisting of Storage Insights, Transit Insights and Predictive Screening was officially launched by AgroFresh in July 2018. This commercial launch came after over ten years of research and development activities. After almost a year the company already has a lot of qualitative feedback from customers about the value FreshCloud brings them.

Brittany Buchanan, FreshCloud Global Business Lead explains: “FreshCloud Predictive Screening gives growers at harvest assessments of a product’s risk for specific quality concerns, helping to guide important management actions early in the supply chain. FreshCloud Storage Insights gives storage operators, packers and markers insights on the health of fruit throughout its storage, which offers peace of mind as well as proactive insight on problems. FreshCloud Transit Insights allows shippers and retailers to better understand environmental conditions’ impact on specific lots of fruit to help optimize inventory management, improve produce quality for consumers and decrease food waste”.

At the moment, FreshCloud Transit Insights service tracks the condition of a variety of produce while FreshCloud Predictive Screening and FreshCloud Storage Insights offerings can be used on apples. AgroFresh continues to advance technology to provide solutions for additional crop varieties.

A case study from Olympic Fruit in Washington’s Yakima Valley demonstrates the benefits of FreshCloud Storage Insights and how it reduces food waste.

Olympic Fruit used FreshCloud Storage Insights

and discovered that a 450-bin lot of Fuji apples were decaying faster than expected. By opening the room sooner than previously planned, they were able to capture savings of approximately 1-1½ packs per bin. Based on the average FOB price for Fujis that year, Olympic estimates it saved the grower approximately $32 a bin, totally $14,400 because of the added insight provided by FreshCloud Storage Insights.

FreshCloud current and future customers include produce producers, storage operators, packers, marketers and retail groups. FreshCloud provides science-driven data at key points of the supply chain to help inform important decisions.

Elements of the FreshCloud platform are currently available across North America, Latin America and Europe, the company continues to expand their reach within and beyond these regions for a variety of crops.

“We believe our FreshCloud technology will have a very positive impact on reducing food waste and protecting our planet. Additionally, our SmartFresh solution has also made the supply chain for apples more sustainable by reducing over 8 million tons of CO2 emissions out of the system. SmartFresh reduces food waste by elongating shelf-life of fresh apples. Since its release, over half a billion pounds of apples have been sold at the retail level rather than being sent to the landfill. This equates to saving over 800 million gallons of water and over 22,000 hectares of production that would have been wasted”, - ends Brittany Buchanan.

For further information please see https://www.agrofresh.com/contact-us/