The 2017 United Fresh Expo has been wrapped up in Chicago and our Fox Solutions team brought three of our machines, the Newtec 4009 B2 Weigher, the new and improved Pouch Bagger and the WB Bagger series, to show off to the attendees of the show. Here are some highlights of our innovative equipment solutions you may have missed at United Fresh Expo 2017.
Even after a fruit or vegetable is removed from its plant, it is still a living organism that continues to exhibit certain biological functions that help to keep its cells alive and thriving well after harvesting. At the most basic level, carbohydrates that are stored in each piece of produce are continually burning energy just as the human body does.
Over the last decade, sustainable packaging options have increased to one degree or another from the introduction of original packaging innovations to modifications of existing designs that now include higher levels of sustainable components.
For fresh produce packers, traditional wicketed baggers on the market required a compromise of some kind from food safety to functionality. We say those compromises becoming significant operational challenges for our customers. That is why we designed the revolutionary WB Automated Wicketed Bagger. Simple and user-friendly, our bagger is engineered specifically for food safety and handles product sizes from key limes to grapefruit.
Potatoes have always presented a unique challenge with their sensitivity to light exposure and the resulting green discoloration. Shoppers learned to address this issue at home by storing potatoes in closed bins that prevented any light exposure at all. But retailers also needed a solution to manage the greening happening while the product sat on the store shelf. Efforts had included tinted poly bags, ‘special’ lights and tarping the displays at night to minimize hours of light exposure, but nothing seemed to yield adequate results. And with the greening, came costly product loss.
