PRESS RELEASE

Houweling’s Group has officially launched its plastic-free CaliforniaGrown English Cucumbers in partnership with Apeel.

While English Cucumbers traditionally have required single-use plastic for shelf-life extension and product quality through the supply chain, Apeel Cucumbersmaintain freshness, firmness, and color without single-use plastics.

Walmart is among the first to pilot plastic-free cucumbers with Apeel on store shelves. Consumers and Retailers continue to seek out more sustainable packaging formats and brands who are committed to sustainability as a core tenet.

With this demand in the marketplace, Houweling’s is gratified to be the first to market and lead the adoption of a more sustainable cucumber.

For every 500,000 cases shippedHouweling’s and Apeel will eliminate the equivalent of 820,000 single-use plastic water bottles out of the supply chain and ultimately out of landfills.

“From the first time we reviewed the potential of plastic-free cucumbers, we saw the opportunity and the challenge of bringing avante-garde technology to market. From a high-level, the opportunity to lead a disruption in this categorCucumbery and improve our decorated sustainability profile put us on course to where we are today," shared Kevin Doran, Houweling’s Group President & CEO.

Apeel is on a mission to eliminate food waste with avocados, organic apples and limes at major U.S. retail grocers and avocados and citrus in the European Union. But for the first time the edible “peel” technology is being used to replace plastic and replicate the shelf-life the plastic provides the standard pack at retail.

David Bell, Houweling’s Group CMO noted: “When surveying the cucumber consumer, we heard loud and clear the desire to avoid single-use plastics, with 62% holding the preference. This echoed the direct requests we hear from consumers and retail partners around removing the plastic. Quite simply, it wasn’t possible until we found Apeel.”