AgroFresh Solutions and Zest Labs™ announced today a strategic collaboration between AgroFresh and Zest Labs to strengthen their end-to-end solutions. AgroFresh will incorporate Zest Labs’ Zest Fresh™ solution into its FreshCloud™ Transit Insights platform. The agreement will utilize both companies’ resources and strengths to provide customers with a comprehensive solution that improves operations, increases visibility into produce shelf life and reduces food waste.
AgroFresh’s FreshCloud platform is a data-backed, insights-driven solution for monitoring produce quality through the supply chain. The FreshCloud platform is able to predict produce freshness, quality and optimal consumption timing.
Zest Fresh is the post-harvest freshness management solution for today’s produce industry. By intelligently managing the handling and quality of each pallet of produce beginning in the field, Zest Fresh enables seamless matching of the industry’s freshness needs with the actual produce freshness while monitoring adherence to the grower’s processes.
“As we continue to prioritize data and technology to enhance produce freshness and minimize food waste, this strategic collaboration will strengthen our existing portfolio, particularly our data-centric FreshCloud™ platform,” said Jordi Ferre, CEO of AgroFresh. “Zest Fresh is a natural fit with our FreshCloud Transit Insights solution and will accelerate the adoption of our technology to additional markets.”
“AgroFresh’s offering of Zest Fresh is significant as they are a trusted global expert in post-harvest science with over 3,500 customers worldwide and can quickly expand Zest Fresh into new markets and with new types of fresh produce,” said Peter Mehring, CEO of Zest Labs. “Our collective science-based, data-driven solutions and shared market vision for ensuring delivered freshness and reducing food waste provide a foundation for a successful partnership.”
With decades of experience and expertise in the science of produce freshness, AgroFresh helps its customers preserve freshness, extend peak ripeness, maximize yield and ultimately, prevent food waste. Zest Fresh, provides analytics and freshness management expertise that will complement the AgroFresh FreshCloud platform by strengthening the end-to-end visibility of key freshness metrics through distribution.
Through this collaboration, AgroFresh will apply its industry expertise to offer the Zest Fresh pallet-level freshness management platform for fresh produce as part of its FreshCloud Transit Insights solution. Zest Fresh, with its real-time data and predictive analytics capabilities provides growers, distributors and retailers with autonomous, field-to-shelf product visibility that reduces waste and retail shrink up to 50 percent or more. As a result of this collaboration, the expertise and insight embedded in AgroFresh’s FreshCloud solution will benefit more customers across more crops.