Solutions Spotlight: Areco Pacific

Solution Providers

Areco Pacific, the Australian subsidiary from the company Areco located in France, specialises in the performance of fresh food departments, in the fight against food waste, the promotion of better eating and the preservation of the environment.

Areco Pacific are founding Solution Providers Signatories of the Australian Food Pact. Robert Mura, Head of Operations, shares more in this spotlight on food waste solutions.

As a Solution Provider of the Australian Food Pact, how are you helping keep food from becoming waste?

When leafy vegetables are displayed in a refrigerated wall case, the cold air would dry out the produce very quickly and reduce its shelf life and increase food waste.

With Areco’s Nebulisation system there is an opportunity to reduce waste by dispersing microdroplets of water which increases humidity and allows the produce thrive and increase its shelf life whilst locking in its nutritional values.

Areco’s three main solutions are:

• Nebulisation: This is a misting system which spread a cold fog over fresh produces (fruits/veg/meat/seafood/cheese) This system is effective in terms of humidity control, weight loss reduction, breakage reduction which led to less food waste.
• Cold Plates: Maintain an optimal temperature, divide weight loss by 2, slowdown natural product degradation, eliminate packing at the end of the day.
• Fresh herbs module: Reduce breakage, maintain freshness, slowdown natural produce degradation. 

We are also introducing a Juice machine, its purpose is simple: you can make your own juices as you like. You just have to insert the fruits you want in the machine, and it takes care of everything, it peels them and makes you a delicious fruit juice. Its use can also be extended to fight against food waste, especially by making juices with fruits too ripe or your “ugly fruit”.

Collaboration is a key ingredient to food waste action – who are you working with and/or who can you support?

Areco Pacific work with Woolworths and Coles and some independent stores such as IGA’s, SPAR, which means that we mostly deal with retail store. Working with Australia’s largest retail stores shows how big a concern food waste is, and it’s great to see people and businesses making efforts to reduce food waste.

You saw a food waste challenge and identified an opportunity – what’s a moment you’re proud of?

Areco Pacific ran a case study in IGA Mount Barker, South Australia, for two months and would love to share some of the key results. 

The Areco nebulisation system was installed on IGA Mount Barker’s refrigerated wall case measuring 3.75 metres by 1.5 metres.

During this time, the store’s experienced:

• Daily food waste savings of 2 kg for fresh produce (with estimated annual savings of approximately $3640 AUD a year).
• An extended shelf life of fresh produce by 1.5 days
• Most effective in preserving leafy line, lettuces, broccolini, and open potted herbs.

If we do the annual calculation taking a base of 2kg of waste savings a day in a year, this would total almost 730kg of fresh produce saved.

What’s coming up for Areco Pacific? What can we look out for?

Keep our work going with Woolworths and Coles and develop our relationship with them. We would like to work more with IGA stores, this is an important part of retail stores across Australia, and the more stores we equip, the more we can help reduce food waste. We are also looking at the Asian market that could be a good way to export our solutions.

What’s coming up for Areco Pacific? What can we look out for?

To learn more, visit:

• Website: www.arecopacific.com.au
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/showcase/areco-pacific/
•  Linktree: https://linktr.ee/arecopacific

Or get in touch:

• Robert Mura, Head of Operations:+61 (0)422 113 300
• service.apa@areco.fr