“We saw the possibility of accessing Corfo financing lines, since our objective is to provide solutions to the food export industry, and that is precisely what we are looking for, to offer packaging for cherries shipments that is friendly to the environment. environment and be able to better conserve the precious cargo abroad ”.

This is how Juan Carlos Carrasco, owner of the Zeaplast company that operates in the Coronel industrial park, explained that it is about to offer a new product for sustainable export packaging with better benefits.

The justification

Cherry shipments can take between 15 and 45 days to reach their destinations, causing deterioration of the fruit on the way. One way to avoid this is to maintain strict temperature control and use packaging materials that help maintain quality during storage and distribution.

The executive director of Corfo Biobío, Macarena Vera, explained that "this project seeks for the industry to use materials that help in the process, and this is an innovative proposal that will undoubtedly contribute to a better management of the fruit," said the director.

It should be explained that among the packaging used in the export of cherries are the modified atmosphere bags, which reduce the levels of O2 and increase the atmospheric CO2 inside the container, which reduces the respiration of the fruits, slowing down the ripening processes. of the same, with the purpose of increasing its useful life. However, like other packaging, these bags are made with petroleum-derived plastics that become polluting waste that negatively impacts the environment, explained Juan Carlos Carrasco.

For this reason, in certain markets, plastic food packaging waste is regulated by taxes for its disposal. This situation has led the fruit sector, due to the demand of external customers, to raise the need to use sustainable packaging such as compostable biodegradable products with the property of a modified atmosphere.

To date, the project, in its first year of execution, has developed a thermoplastic formulation based on the biopolymer polylactic acid (PLA) at the laboratory level.

Corn is the main material of the compostable modified atmosphere bags that Zeaplast works on.

"Once the ideal formulation has been reached, it seeks to scale its production to a pilot level and thus have enough kilograms of material to produce prototypes of bags at an industrial level to project, in this second year of execution, the implementation of a series of tests under simulated conditions to to validate the performance of the bags as bulk cherry packaging material ”affirms Juan Carlos Carrasco, representative of the company, who added that once this has been achieved, they can be officially certified in Santiago, so that they can be offered to the export sector.

Expanding cherries

The president of the Association of Fruit Exporters of Chile AG (Asoex), Ronald Bown, explained that “Chile continues to expand its fruit export horizons in Asia, and in Southeast Asia in particular, where there are close to 600 million consumers willing to to consume the high quality of imported fresh fruit. As Chile's cherry supply continues to grow, the opening of the Vietnamese market marks another important milestone for our industry. To support the entry of this fruit to this market, we have developed a comprehensive promotional campaign that announces the availability of Chilean cherries in all market segments, with the intention of educating both buyers and consumers about our offer ”.