AgroFresh: VitaFresh™ Botanicals and FreshCloud™, two innovations that reduce food waste

AgroFresh was present at Fruit Logistica 2022. According to Michael Hamby, Chief Commercial Officer, of the company, this fair is a key event for them: “Fruit Logistica is an important global customer trade show for AgroFresh, allowing us to showcase our innovative products and services and connect with other industry leaders. After two years without international trade shows, our team really enjoyed the opportunity to meet in person to discuss the industry’s challenges and opportunities.”   

As an AgTech innovator and global leader, AgroFresh is on a mission to prevent food waste by providing a range of science-based solutions, data-driven digital technologies and high-touch customer service. Fruit Logistica was the perfect forum for the company to meet with their customers fade to face and share more about the many AgroFresh solutions that can help them enhance the quality and extend the shelf life of their crops, and fight food loss and waste.

AgroFresh's team at Fruit Logistica 2022

AgroFresh showcased two of its latest innovations

The company’s booth presentations were focused on two of their latest innovations. “We showcased VitaFresh™ Botanicals, the plant-based, edible coatings for produce freshness and shelf-life extension for a wide variety of crops from avocados to citrus to nectarines. We also did an open demonstration on FreshCloud™, the digital platform that uses real-time data and analytics, providing end to end visibility to help customers make crucial decisions on produce quality, harvest timing, packing, storage, and market conditions.” 

“Our products were met with a lot of enthusiasm by attendees who were interested in learning more about both solutions. We made sure to collect their information so we could organize future demo trials with our team of experts.”

Regarding VitaFresh Botanicals, AgroFresh expects this product use to continue to grow as the company expands its range of plant-based coatings into more crops and regions.

VitaFresh™ Botanicals's presentation

VitaFresh™ Botanicals: a solution that helps to extend fruits’ shelf life

VitaFresh Botanicals is a proprietary line of plant-based edible coatings. From citrus and avocados to mangos or nectarines, VitaFresh Botanicals are an important step forward in superior freshness, extended shelf-life, reduced food loss and waste, and superior taste. VitaFresh Botanicals coatings utilize “anti-thirst” technology to boost the skin’s natural protection, creating a “double skin” membrane that reduces dehydration, maintains weight and locks in produce freshness throughout the supply chain. VitaFresh Botanicals gives packers a much stronger opportunity to market the best quality produce and improve consumer satisfaction while increasing profit potential. VitaFresh Botanicals coatings offer several technical and functional benefits as well as cost-efficiencies.  

“At Fruit Logistica, we presented VitaFresh Botanical’s benefits for avocados. Our coating helps to extend the avocado shelf life in “ready to buy” and “ready to eat” stages. The product also maximizes freshness and moisture, improves the appearance and firmness of the fruit, reduces weight loss and decreases internal browning. The results are remarkable, giving avocados two to four days longer shelf life, reducing waste by 50 percent. Our solutions are versatile, for use before or after ripening, as well as sustainably sourced and vegan certified. These solutions are available worldwide, and have seen much success in Europe, Africa and Latin America. We expect this product use to continue to grow as we expand our range of plant-based coatings into more crops and regions.”

FreshCloud™ digital technology's presentation

FreshCloud™ digital technology: to make the entire supply chain more efficient and effective

“During Fruit Logistica, we officially launched FreshCloud in Europe, which was already a big success in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. We are excited that this technology is now available in Europe which is the beginning of a new era for the cloud-based technology on this continent.”

FreshCloud is a game changer that makes the entire supply chain more efficient and effective. It’s an innovative digital technology that combines unique sensor technology, internet connectivity, data analytics, disorder screenings and decades of AgroFresh plant physiology expertise to give growers, packers and retailers powerful insights into produce quality through every step of the supply chain from harvest to the retail shelves.

“FreshCloud Quality Inspection is our proprietary cloud-based platform that digitizes the formerly manual quality control process by capturing, organizing and analyzing quality metrics in real time. With all necessary inspections and actions conducted on mobile devices, FreshCloud allows customers to track and score the quality metrics of their fruits instantly, providing complete visibility into and streamlining the fruit-quality inspection process. Ultimately, FreshCloud helps to reduce food waste by lowering rejections and improving the consistency of the produce. Our platform combines AI and digital insights to help our customers make real-time decisions to reduce food waste, manage supply chain challenges and ultimately deliver the highest quality and sustainable produce to the world’s markets.”

AgroFresh's booth at Fruit Logistica 2022

SmartFresh™

While much of our focus at Fruit Logistica was on VitaFresh Botanicals and FreshCloud, AgroFresh also promoted its legacy product, SmartFresh: “This solution revolutionized the apple industry 20 years ago with the original 1-MCP technology. Over the years, we have continued to enhance this technology, which extended to a wide variety of crops including stone fruit, kiwi and melons.”