Apio expands use of smart packaging

California produce grower/marketer Apio launches a 3-lb retail package of fresh-cut veggies in a rigid PET tray with a breathable patch that provides a 14-day shelf life.

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The Eat Smart Veggie Tray from Apio Inc. offers consumers 3 lb of fresh, ready-to-eat vegetables and dip that they can buy at the supermarket one minute and serve to party guests the next. Recently developed packaging technology provides the 14-day refrigerated shelf life Apio needs for national distribution.

"Traditionally this kind of tray is available with a very short shelf life," says Nicholas DaCosta, vice president of the value-added products division at Apio. Four or five days is typical, he adds. "The Landec technology allows us to go to 14 days."

The technology to which DaCosta refers is the Intellipac(TM) system from Landec (Menlo Park, CA). It relies on a "side chain crystallizable polymer" applied as a coating to a substrate that Landec won't identify. The substrate is cut into patches that are roughly 2" square. Applied as a pressure-sensitive label or heat-sealed to packages of fresh-cut produce, the patch regulates oxygen ingress and carbon dioxide egress according to the prevailing temperature. As temperatures rise and the fresh, respiring produce needs more oxygen, the polymer becomes more permeable, allowing oxygen in and carbon dioxide out at a higher rate.

The ratio of gas exchange doesn't have to be 1:1, either. The Intellipac technology is said to maintain carbon dioxide/oxygen ratios of anywhere from 18:1 to 1/2:1. It's a matter of changing the chemical composition of the coating and/or the size of the patch itself according to the specific gas needs of the vegetable being packaged. That's something you just don't get with other fresh-cut produce packaging materials, says DaCosta.

This is not Apio's first use of the Intellipac technology in the retail arena. About two years ago the Guadalupe, CA, firm introduced 3-lb portions of fresh-cut vegetables in premade bags that had the Intellipac patch applied during the bag-making process (see Packaging World, June '97, p. 2 or www.packworld.com/go/apio). Use of the patch on a rigid tray grew out of the flexible bag program.

The Eat Smart trays, like the bags that preceded them, require no ice during shipment. Packed four per corrugated shipper, the trays are sent to supermarket distribution centers nationwide in refrigerated trucks.

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