When Martin’s Family Fruit Farm decided to turn the fruit of its labor into a snack, Kevin Martin drove from Ontario to North Carolina with boxes of apples in the back of his truck. He dreamed of developing a product from the orchards on his family’s 700-acre farm, and he wanted Bühler Aeroglide’s drying expertise to help bring the idea to market.

One of the largest growers, packers and shippers in Canada, the Martin family business has traditionally harvested a variety of apples, but the idea of developing an apple snack was new. Martin envisioned a healthy snack with the crunchy texture of a potato chip, free of the preservatives and added sugars commonly found in many snack food products. Plus, he wanted to use an air drying process to remove as much moisture as possible to create a product with the healthy taste of a natural apple.