Nature Fresh Farms Releases NEW 100% Home Compostable Cucumber Wrap

Leamington, ON (September 8, 2020) – Nature Fresh Farms continue their sustainable initiatives by releasing a new, 100% home compostable wrap for their Long English Cucumbers, a first in the North American market.

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An alternative to traditional polyethylene plastic, this film is an environmentally friendly compostable wrap that breaks down in a household compost without leaving behind microplastics. The compostable film will prolong the shelf life of the product; however, it will do so without adding to long term landfill waste. Made from a starch-based PLA that is derived from plant-based resources including non-GMO corn starch, it is 100% compostable, breaking down naturally into CO2 and water.

Each cucumber wrap contains 0.00436 lbs of plastic; this translates to the equivalent of 23-million plastic straws saved from landfills for every 5-million Cucumbers wrapped in the compostable film. Cucumbers are packed in shrink wrap to significantly extend their life by minimizing evaporation. Through the compostable film, Nature Fresh Farms has found a packaging solution that can maintain the shelf life of the Cucumber, while meeting the demands of more sustainable packaging alternatives.

“The launch of the compostable wrap is a demonstration of our commitment to our consumer’s wants of reducing plastic usage. We are excited to be first to market with this initiative in North American and are hopeful this will start a trend with the industry while we continue to lead in sustainable packaging solutions.”

--Matt Quiring, Director of Sales

In addition, the wrap includes a PLU pre-printed on the film in compostable ink. This feature allows the entire wrap to be thrown in with backyard compost or in landfills without harming the environment. PLU stickers are commonly made of vinyl and plastic. This new wrap eliminates the need for the additional application.

“After two years of research & development and a lot of trial & error, it’s so exciting to see this film launch in the market. We are confident in this product’s ability to make a true difference
(in reducing harmful plastic waste)”

---Luci Faas, Product Development Specialist

At Nature Fresh Farms we are driven to accelerate innovation via evidence-informed sustainable packaging solutions that provide a better experience for our customers, while also helping to preserve the vitality of our planet.

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About Nature Fresh Farms -

Continuously expanding, Nature Fresh Farms has become one of the largest independent, vertically integrated greenhouse vegetable farms in North America. As a year-round grower with farms in Leamington ON, Delta OH, and Mexico, Nature Fresh Farms prides itself on consistently delivering exceptional flavor and quality to key retailers throughout North America, while continuing to innovate and introduce more viable and sustainable growing and packaging solutions.

SOURCE: Nature Fresh Farms | info@naturefresh.ca T: 519 326 1111 | www.naturefresh.ca

How VeggiTech Contributes To UAE's Agenda To build Food And Water Security

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VeggiTech farm - Image Credit: Supplied

VeggiTech's Produce Utilizes Less Than 10 Percent

of The Water Used In Traditional Farms

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August 31, 2020

VeggiTech is an agrotech company with the sole aim of disrupting the agriculture industry. VeggiTech focuses on addressing the key challenges of traditional farming – soil, temperature, and water through its design of protected hydroponics and grow lights-assisted hydroponics. We have chosen the challenging conditions of the UAE to demonstrate the positive use of agro-technology to create sustainable farms aligned to the UAE’s vision of food security.

In the last 18 months, VeggiTech has built and is operating over 30 hectares of farms with protected hydroponics. It is in the process of going live with 4,500 sq meters of indoor vertical farms that employ grow light-assisted hydroponics. We produced over 1.6million kilograms of produce last year and this year (including the summer months), we are delighted to produce over 1.9million kilograms with over 500+ tones of organic produce from our farms between August 2020 and July 2021.

VeggiTech's produce utilizes less than 10 percent of the water used in traditional farms and is pesticide-free. In addition, we have deployed technology for complete food transparency through QR codes that give complete visibility of the growing process of the vegetable produced in our farms.

VeggiTech's current operations  and plans in H1 2021

VeggiTech is in the business of offering farming as a service, where it builds and operates digital smart farms that are sustainable and environmentally-friendly for our customers. With a team of over 160+ professionals; and one of the strongest agronomy and engineering teams in the region, we are poised for growth over the next 3 – 5 years.

In the first half of 2020, despite the COVID–19 circumstances we have signed contracts for 13,000 sq.ft. grow area of indoor vertical farms, and are building protected hydroponic farms of 80,000 sqft. You will experience buying live produce from our indoor vertical farm installations in all Sharjah Co-operative Society stores soon with the first one going live in Al Rahmaniya Mall, Sharjah, next month.

We opened our Helsinki, Finland, offices in March 2020; joined the Association of Vertical Farming (AVF) headquartered in Munich, Germany, where we have been invited to play a lead role in creating industry standards for Indoor Vertical farms world-wide.

VeggiTech was invited by the Ministry of Education and Food and Water Security Office to host a webinar series “Grow Your Food” for students in the Youth Summer Camps across July and August 2020. We live-streamed the informative sessions from our farms providing insights on achieving food security through technology. The audience was segregated into three batches of 6 – 10-year-olds; 10 – 14-year-olds and 14 – 18-year-olds.

We are currently in advanced discussions with private investors and government organizations in Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi on large scale projects to make UAE food secure with good quality local food.

Sustainable Communities

VeggiTech has recently signed up for designing and developing sustainable grow areas with major players that specialize in developing sustainable communities in UAE. This exciting development underlines our vision of bringing “grow” spaces close to our “living” spaces.

Sustainable agro - Economic model

Dubai SME, the agency of Dubai Economy, mandated to develop the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, collaborated with VeggiTech through their Innovation Accelerator program and commissioned it to install an Indoor Vertical farm in their Business Village campus in Deira Dubai (scheduled to go live in Q4 2020). This set-up would showcase the circular farm-to-fork economic model with the Indoor Vertical farm (IVF), growing green leafy, herbs, and microgreens, and these are converted into end consumer produce in the form of farm-fresh salads / curated recipe packages.

Food security

We are upbeat on the current pipeline of projects (10M+ sqft of farms - protected hydroponics; 200,000+ sqft of Indoor vertical farms) to be signed in Q3 / Q4 2020 and these would start producing over 25million kgs of produce every year from 2021 - 2022. The optimal use of land assets combined with the reduction in water resources and pesticide-free crops are an ideal example of using technology to align with UAE’s food security goals.

Social impact

While the COVID – 19 circumstances are charting unprecedented scenarios across our lives; we, as the local farmers, were privileged to work with Sharjah Charity Association, Shurooq, The Noodle House, and Dubai Police to support our heroes, our frontline healthcare workers, and families, with over 20 tons of our farm fresh vegetables delivered contactless. 

VeggiTech is privileged to play its role in this journey.

Source Courtesy of Gulf News

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