AgroFresh Solutions, Inc., a global leader in post-harvest solutions for fresh produce, has partnered with Fruitways, a leader in the South African apple industry, for more than 20 years.

Having integrated the AgroFresh SmartFresh™ Quality System into their operations for many years has helped Fruitways revolutionize their business by allowing longer fruit storage and exporting good quality fruit over a much longer season.

It has also opened markets that were previously unavailable due to quality constraints. Now, with the addition of Harvista™ 1.3 SC as a near-harvest product, Fruitways has another valuable tool to manage produce quality before and during harvest.

"AgroFresh is an important supplier partner for us," said Jaco Moelich, Fruitways General Manager – Technical Services. "Both Harvista and SmartFresh give us valuable tools to determine the timeframe that we want to harvest and when we want to pack the fruit for our clients. SmartFresh has transformed the way we think about our post-harvest process and how we make decisions on storage and marketing of our fruit."  

SmartFresh™ Quality System and Harvista™ 1.3 SC technology have transformed Fruitways' presence in the pome industry.

"The climate is not always ideal for good color development, so you sometimes need a bit longer time on the tree for the cold fronts to come in the autumn time and Harvista allows us to delay our harvest. You get a bit bigger size, but you also get very good color development if you can delay your harvest a little bit," added Moelich. "In post-harvest, the most important thing is texture and SmartFresh plays a very big role in maintaining a crisp texture during storage, long after apple harvest, for consumers."

"It fills us with a sense of pride and satisfaction knowing that Fruitways and the pome industry is benefiting from the research and investments AgroFresh has made, and is still making, in the sphere of quality management," said Peter Wood, Country Manager South Africa for AgroFresh. "Collaborations like the one with Fruitways are the cornerstone of the success AgroFresh has had over decades in the industry. We answer real quality and freshness challenges our customers face throughout the fresh produce supply chain."

AgroFresh commercialized the SmartFresh™ Quality System products based on 1-MCP, beginning in 2003 with the application for apples. In the last 20 years, it has been expanded for use in multiple crops and new applications in field, storage, and transit.

Their focus on quality and freshness has driven the advancement of their solutions portfolio beyond ethylene management to include fungicides, coatings, and digital platforms, including FreshCloud™ for quality inspection and in-room wireless monitoring with the Strella sensor.

"The SmartFresh Quality System has really transformed the way we think about our post-harvest process and how we make decisions on the storage and marketing of our fruit. Going forward, I cannot imagine how we would handle a process without this collaboration with AgroFresh," said Moelich.