SANTA BARBARA, CA - Apeel Sciences has launched a suite of advancements thanks to its release of RipeTrack. A bevy of measurement tools and monitoring software will now be available to provide suppliers, distributors, and grocery retailers with unprecedented insight into produce ripeness through a fully digitized, user-friendly platform.
“Before launching this system, testing ripeness at different stages of the supply chain was a time-consuming process that yielded inconsistent results, and a disconnect with what a retail buyer expected on shelves to drive sales,” said Ryan Fink, Senior Vice President of the Americas. “We developed RipeTrack to optimize the decades-old process and give the produce industry more insight into the sales-driving quality attributes of their programming, resulting in more product delivered to required specifications and less product wasted.”
RipeTrack benefits all nodes of the produce supply chain and ultimately results in measurably higher quality produce for consumers. As noted in the release, RipeTrack can determine the ripeness and quality of produce instantly with a growing suite of non-destructive tools, including a durometer, a method of testing produce firmness that has proven to be three times more accurate than industry standards. This information is automatically inputted into a cloud-based data management system and can be digitally shared with team members for analysis.
The suite of tools also uses AI technology to determine the ideal ripe date for a piece of produce by analyzing data such as country of origin, pack date, and data from a durometer, allowing suppliers and retailers to make informed decisions about shipping and merchandising the fruit.
“RipeTrack has received great feedback in initial trials with retailers and produce distributors,” said Fink. “Users recognize how it simplifies the ripeness testing and measurement process, and are immediately seeing the benefit of the increased visibility. Many retailers understand the sales value of offering ripe produce to meet customer demand and drive sales, now they have a system of tools that will allow them to execute these programs with confidence.”
This fully digitized process benefits all nodes of the produce supply chain. The easy-to-use inspection platform was developed in partnership with retail quality control teams and enables ripeness data to be instantly captured and analyzed during the ripening, shipping, and receiving processes. All inspection data from across a retailer or supplier’s operations is then aggregated into a program dashboard, allowing decision-makers to assess whether the produce is meeting their goals for ripeness or freshness.
Originally developed to support the avocado category, the RipeTrack offering is quickly growing to serve multiple produce categories and use cases in the supply chain. In order to capture additional quality attributes, Apeel is integrating its advanced imaging capabilities into RipeTrack to accurately and non-destructively assess factors of ripeness such as dry matter, Brix, and color.
Visit Apeel at booth #3953 at the International Fresh Produce Association Global Produce & Floral Show in Anaheim, October 19–21 to see this technology in use, and click here for the full release.
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