Decco: Freshness Control through Coatings, Fruit Treatments and Environment Treatments

Editor’s Note: Developed countries, such as America and the European nations,always attach great importance to preserving agricultural products, where 70% of agricultural investment is spent on post-harvest applications to ensure the added value of crops and the full utilization of farm products. On the other side, in developing countries, the public’s living standards and health consciousness are growing, and their demand for high-quality farm products is also growing, especially for vegetable and fruit, which drives the continued development of post-harvest applications. Furthermore, the food wastage challenge worldwide is an important engine which propels the development of post-harvest preservation technologies.

In view of the important position of post-harvest application techniques in the agricultural supply chain, AgroPages recently invited industry leaders, including AgroFresh Solution, Decco Worldwide Post-Harvest Holding and Compac, to introduce the latest post-harvest solutions, business mode/industrial advantages, as well as future planning etc. The interview details of Decco are as follow:

Q. Could you briefly introduce the global market situation of the Post-harvest Freshness industry?

Crops are suffering extreme weather conditions such as high temperatures, intense rains or lack of water. These factors are greatly affecting fruit quality. It’s in those case, where postharvest treatments play an important role to maintain the quality of fruit by protecting them from those biological and environmental factors involved in their deterioration.

Besides, there is an intense market competition regarding new varieties, prices, harvesting areas and fruit quality parameters. These facts, together with the high standard of customers’ quality expectations and legal restrictions make the challenge of supplying tasty fruit over long distances while extending its shelf life even more demanding.

Decco has a direct presence in more than 50 countries, each one facing a set of unique postharvest challenges, although they each have some common issues.

At Decco we work to comply with solutions to suit the requirements of each market regarding products, technology needs and legal terms.

Q. Could you please briefly introduce Decco’s development history and main target market?

Decco was born with the objective of maintaining the health and freshness of fruit, in terms of time and distance. Although the company's scope is nowadays much wider, the philosophy remains constant. For that reason, our R+D team work with the cutting-edge resources and facilities to improve formulations and develop new technologies to find answers to increasingly demanding needs.

Our team, around the world, strives to deliver sound advice, to get single tailored made treatments to each of our clients, matching their quality expectations to serve healthy fruit, under those ever more challenging legal parameters. 

Since its foundation in 1934, the company has experienced steady growth and currently has manufacturing and research facilities in the United States (2), Spain, Italy, France, Israel and South Africa.

Over recent years, Decco has allocated important resources to develop Latin America markets which has resulted in significant achievements both in sales and market shares. In due course a new factory will be fully operating to serve the needs of the Brazilian market. With this new facility, Decco will become the first manufacturer in the country able to emulsify waxes and edible coatings in accordance with both local and European market restrictions.

The commitment to emerging countries is always present in Decco’s strategy. We are constantly helping markets with low or even no post-harvest philosophy treatments to adopt this technology in order to increase their competitiveness and profitability.

Q.Could you please introduce Decco's post-harvest product series and its advantages?

Decco offers a number of products for freshness control in the form of coatings, fruit treatments and environment treatments. In the coatings category, Decco offers both wax based products as well as new edible coatings. Our wax based coatings are well known around the world by the brand names of CITRASHINE, DECCO LUSTR, CITRUS LUSTR, CARNAUBA PREMIUM, APL-BRITE and PINEAPPLE LUSTR, ZIVDAR among others. These coatings have been designed to preserve freshness and create pleasing aesthetics.  In addition to traditional shellac based coatings, Decco has introduced high performance carnauba and polyethylene based coatings which offer optimal combinations of shine, freshness control, dry time, and easy application in packing houses. 

Decco has recently introduced advanced edible coatings under the brand name NATURCOVER which can be used in diverse markets such as citrus, pome, melons, pomegranate, avocado etc. The NATURCOVER edible coatings offer excellent color retention and healthy respiration of the fruit to maintain optimum taste qualities.  These coatings can be applied on produce which are not traditionally wax coated on packing lines and thus offer a new approach to control freshness. An advanced version of the NATURCOVER product has been introduced for the pome market to delay or minimize the development of scalding. 

In the category of treatments to maintain freshness, Decco offers several formulations of CIPC for the potato market to inhibit sprouting. As regards to environmental control, Decco offers ethylene absorption tubes to manage ethylene levels during storage and transit. Managing the ethylene levels allows for the control of product freshness.

With these solutions, Decco’s customersobtain from a single supplier all they need to maintain the quality of their fruit, and freshness from the field to the plate.

Q. Could you talk about the cooperation situation with other companies?

Part of the Decco’s success is due to our long term established relationship with strategic partners. Being a multinational with a presence in all the continents and with more than 80 years in the market, makes it attractive to core stakeholders to join forces with us.

On the one hand, Decco has a strong alliance with key suppliers in the sector. This give us a strong competitive advantage since we have access to global resources. On the other hand, many customers choose Decco due to our level of service and our wide portfolio of solutions that allow them to remain competitive and deliver the best fruit quality to the market.

Q. What is the Decco’s new products development/launch planning?

Decco has a number of new products in the pipeline targeted towards freshness control.  Decco has developed a patented 1-MCP product under the brand name TruPick to address freshness control in pome and other fruits. Worldwide introduction of this material is in progress pending appropriate regulatory approvals. 

In addition, Decco has plans to introduce new technologies in storage solutions and transit solutions, all geared towards controlling ripening, senescence, and the environment in storage or transit and thereby maintaining freshness.

In the area of low risk active ingredients, Decco is working on botanical/biological active ingredients that can be used in freshness control. Decco is also developing key enabling technology of aerosols to facilitate the waterless/solventless application of actives used in freshness control.