Apeel Sciences—World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and featured in Food Engineering’s Engineering R&D—and Nature’s Pride, a major European supplier of avocados, will work together to integrate Apeel’s plant-derived food waste prevention technology across Nature’s Pride expansive European avocado value chain, pending EU regulatory approval.

Apeel’s technology is expected to double the edible shelf life on average of Nature’s Pride avocados as they reach consumer households.

The Apeel/Nature’s Pride partnership comes at a time when food waste in Europe has reached 88 million tonnes annually, with associated costs estimated at 143 billion Euros, and builds on Apeel’s successful introduction in the U.S., where the technology has demonstrated a greater than 50 percent food waste reduction at the retail level.

As part of the partnership, Nature’s Pride and Apeel Sciences will introduce a co-branded label, showing consumers that the technology has been applied, providing extended shelf life and longer lasting freshness.

“We put the health of people and the environment at the heart of all we do,” says Adriëlle Dankier, chief commercial officer of Nature's Pride. “We are constantly looking for improvements in our value chain to provide our customers with the highest quality and most tasty products. With Apeel, we share the same values: we are both pioneering and passionate about reducing food waste, and we want to work collaboratively with others to solve this problem. This makes Apeel the ideal strategic partner for us. We look forward to reducing food waste, unlocking new value for everybody in the supply chain, and growing the fruit and vegetable business with all of our partners together.”

“Food waste is a massive global problem and with a strategic leader like Nature's Pride, we can look to a future where there's much less waste in the system, and we can advance sustainability together with benefits to everyone in the supply chain,” says James Rogers, chief executive officer and founder of Apeel Sciences. “Nature's Pride and Apeel have the same vision for a future where our food systems operate more harmoniously with nature, and we couldn't be more thrilled to work with them to take the food waste fight to Europe very soon.”