Sustainability and innovation, AgroFresh’ s key assets
Portrait of mature employee in supermarket
AgroFresh is an AgTech innovator and global leader with a mission to prevent food loss and waste and to conserve the planet’s resources by providing a range of science-based solutions, data-driven digital technologies, and high-touch customer services. AgroFresh’s commitment to sustainability comes from more than two decades of delivering innovative solutions that prolong produce freshness and reduce food waste/loss. AgroFresh supports growers, packers, and retailers with solutions across the food supply chain to enhance the quality and extend the shelf life of fresh produce.
AgroFresh recognizes that we all live together on a planet with limited resources. Making the most of these resources is at the core of AgroFresh’s mission, and that offering efficient and renewable solutions is not only a strategic imperative but is a guiding principle for all that they do.
According to the UN FAO, roughly one third of the food produced for human consumption (approximately 1.3 billion metric tons per year) is lost to spoilage or waste. This loss and spoilage within the food supply chain occurs for a variety of reasons, from the degradation of fresh produce during storage and transportation to issues of retail aesthetics and consumers’ perception of freshness. AgroFresh has taken on the challenges of this complex system by balancing innovation and an uncompromising focus on protecting our planet. For AgroFresh, minimizing post-harvest losses of food that is already produced is more sustainable than increasing production to compensate for these losses. Through their lineup of solutions, AgroFresh is working to extend freshness science across a wide range of produce applications from the near-harvest stage to the kitchen table.
Using Less Energy
“How SmartFresh™ brings sustainability and energy savings”.
SmartFresh™ technology not only protects produce, but also helps reduce energy usage. Due to the lower metabolism and respiration rate of fruit treated with SmartFresh, fewer hours are needed for refrigeration, defrosting, ventilation, O2 addition, and CO2 scrubbing. When SmartFresh is combined with changes in the storage regimes (for example, night cooling or increase of storage temperature), there are noticeable gains in energy efficiency, resulting in carbon footprint reductions and cost savings.
Offering New, Innovative Solutions
VitaFresh™ Botanicals is a range of plant-based, edible coatings that keeps produce fresh and helps reduce food loss and waste by limiting fruit dehydration and extending freshness preservation.
FreshCloud™, their digital technology platform, provides breakthrough quality management systems that help growers, packers, and retailers optimize the near-and post-harvest produce inspection processes to extend freshness and thereby reduce food waste.
Reduction of Water Consumption
Control-Tec™ Eco equipment technology allows a greater percentage of water used in the cleaning and processing of produce to be safely reused or returned to the environment by reducing the need for and frequency of water exchanges from prepared solution mixes; clarifying solution mixtures to allow reuse; minimizing spills; improving phytosanitary output by reducing solution exchanges over longer periods; and filtering solution mixtures to reduce organic matter. Control-Tec™ Eco equipment lowers water usage and costs in the agriculture production through advanced wastewater management, which has shown to achieve upwards of 60% reductions in water usage for cherry packers in Chile.
AgroFresh supports growers, packers and retailers with solutions throughout the food supply chain to improve the fruit quality and extend the shelf life of fresh produce.
