Labeling fresh produce is an effective way to minimize packaging, reduce packaging costs, and reduce your impact on the environment. Loose fruit can also help reduce food waste, as consumers buy only what they need.
However, several factors can change the effectiveness of fruit labelling and the ability of the labels to stick to fruit.
At Sinclair, we continually test our labels against 40+ variables known to affect labelling performance on customer sites to ensure a very high application rate.
Some of the biggest variables affecting fruit labelling can be:
Environmental
This can cover a whole manner of different variables. One of the most significant is changes in temperature during a piece of fruit’s lifetime. After being labelled, a piece of fruit may go from a warm and humid packhouse to being stored in cold storage for several months, before being transported, often over long distances, to its end location and sold to the customer.
These dramatic changes in temperature, moisture levels and humidity can affect the adhesion and durability of a label.
Pack Houses Equipment
Pack Houses equipment will vary across the world. With everything from differing equipment to packing speeds.
Laws
In some parts of the world, Fruit requires treatment before shipping. For example, in Australia, fruit shipped interstate requires fumigation/irradiation to protect against fruit fly, an invasive insect that affects some Australian states. Sinclair recently undertook trials to ensure the performance of our label material during this process.
Fruit
The most important factor in good labelling performance is the fruit itself. Its easier to achieve good label performance on an Apple then it is a Kiwi due to the physical characteristics of the fruit.
This only gives you a flavour of some of the factors that could affect labelling. Sinclair will always work with customers to continually test against all these variables to ensure optimum performance and industry leading
