Shelf Life of Fresh Cut Salads Doubled Through Packing System Technology

SLB “Shelf Life Booster”, Hefestus’s proprietary packaging technology, enables Funken not only to increase their salads shelf life, but also to maintain the delicate texture and freshness of the vegetables.

01/06/09 Facing short shelf life of fresh cut salads? Funken, Germany, adapted an innovative packaging system solution, developed by Hefestus, Israel, to overcome the challenges of its products’ shelf-life.

Short shelf life of fresh cut salads is a major challenge for manufacturers and retailers alike, who want to provide a fresh salad to the consumers without the fear it might get spoiled or damaged. “Recent researches specifically indicate that consumers want an 'all in one solution'. Due to their busy lifestyle, they want to eat healthy fresh foods with the convenience of ready-to-use packages, but they want to eat it without preservatives that can harm their health,” notes Oded Shtemer, CEO of Hefestus.

”We looked for the ultimate solution for managing our supply chain efficiently and economically and after examining several alternatives, we decided to choose Hefestus’s advanced packaging system that is based on SLB technology”, says George Funken, Owner of Funken.

The Hefestus team has conducted several trials to adapt its state-of-the-art packaging system to Funken's specific demands. “As a result of implementing SLB technology in our plant, we succeeded in doubling the shelf life of our fresh cut salads while significantly improving the entire supply chain due to fewer returns or discards, lower costs and satisfied consumers,” explains Funken.

SLB “Shelf Life Booster”, Hefestus’s proprietary packaging technology, enables Funken not only to increase their salads shelf life, but also to maintain the delicate texture and freshness of the vegetables. It also dramatically decreased the time required to pack the fresh cut salads as an outcome of moving from a manual packaging machine to an automatic packaging system.

According to Funken, “this move accomplished another important advantage. SLB technology allows us to reduce the costs of packaging materials and improves our environmental profile by using environmentally friendly packaging.”
 
Hefestus, Ltd., is a developer and manufacturer of top-sealing packaging machines. Hefestus specializes in supplying unique and complete packaging solutions for the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. It provides a wide variety of standard and custom-made machines, from manual to fully automatic lines, to meet the complex packaging requirements of processors and consumers.