Technology Shapes the Future of Produce Ripening

Retailers are relying on advanced technology and improved supply chain handling to maintain quality.

Ripening has become more precise due to technology, which can help retailers refine their fruit programs, but it still comes down to working with suppliers and store employees to satisfy the needs of communities and even individual stores.

With different approaches to ripening, success is still measured in purchases. When retailers identify how they need to handle commodities, such as bananas, avocados, mangos and pears, opportunities arise, both in terms of working with suppliers and how they handle fruit in the store. In effect, handling is ripening at the store level.

Take bananas, for example. Gary Campisi, president, Campisi Produce Consulting, Rogers, AR, and former senior director of Quality Control at Walmart, says that demand for color continues to vary among food retailers in commodities such as bananas. Still, many of the biggest, including Walmart, want one color of banana every day.

For other retailers, he says, taking bananas that still have some green on delivery can be a solution when a portion rolls over into the next day and becomes yellow. Consumers who want fruit that will last a bit longer are satisfied. Those who want to eat immediately are too, and the retailer can manage effectively at the store level.

Technology has helped in getting products through the supply chain with more consistency, Campisi says, and artificial intelligence is entering the market.

“It used to be more of an art than a science,” he points out.

More attention to ripening can have its advantages, though. Campisi says Walmart instituted a pear ripening initiative some years ago to good effect, with a demo program seeing a 66% jolt in sales. Later, a ripening program with avocados drove similar sales gains, while a mango initiative made it into the vicinity as well.

Although preconditioned pears were once a rarity, they’ve become an advantage for varieties, such as Anjou and Bartlett, as the main season for the fruit opens up, says Campisi.

DIFFERENT STROKES

Bil Goldfield, director of corporate communications, Dole Food Co., Charlotte, NC, says the general rule has always been that consumer ripening preferences vary and are frequently dictated by geography. “Urban shoppers have tended to prefer ripe, ready-to-eat fruit to enjoy immediately, while their counterparts in rural areas prefer fruit with an extended shelf life since they are in stores less often. While this is still mostly true, this assumption was challenged, at least for bananas, by a national survey conducted by Dole.”

Of the consumers participating in the survey, 29% say they enjoyed eating bananas “that were at least partially green, including 6% that prefer the fruit mostly green,” says Goldfield. “One-half of banana lovers want perfectly yellow fruit with no green or brown spots, which is still significant, but less than the overwhelming dominance of ripe-only fruit that most in the industry assume.”

Goldfield says retailers and produce managers who take a two-color banana merchandising approach, benefit from a larger customer pool and better sales.

Tracie Levin, controller, at wholesaler M. Levin and Co., Philadelphia, PA, says consumer preference around fruit ripeness has been shifting, but not in a single direction. “Shoppers want choice, not a one-size-fits-all ripeness level. Because shoppers want choice, retailers need to figure out a good balance. A smart choice for a retailer would be to have a variety of ripeness stages available.”

Offering both ripe and unripe fruit gives consumers more choice and flexibility, says Peter Shore, vice president of product management at Calavo, Santa Paula, CA. “Promoting ripe now and ripe later signage is key to additional ring ups. Consumers are often shopping for the week, looking for an avocado today and one later.”

Ken Melban, president of the California Avocado Commission, Irvine, CA, says that customer preference has been turning to fruit that’s ready to eat, “driven by convenience and the expectation of a great eating experience. At the same time, retailers absolutely need both ready-to-eat and firmer fruit. Consumers shop with different usage timelines in mind. The right balance really comes down to store-level data.”

Gabriela D’Arrigo, vice president, D’Arrigo New York, Bronx, NY, says retailers are aware of how customers want a product, such as bananas, so the question of how ripe products should be is something that is established on a case-by-case basis.

“The guys who like unripened still want unripened because of their clientele, or because they have a set up in the store,” she says. “And the guys who want to have it on turn, they want to have their two or three days on the shelf.”

In foodservice, as in retail, the preference for not quite ripe produce can vary based on the particular operation, says Tyler Domingo, assistant ripening manager for John Vena Inc., Philadelphia, PA, but adds, “Most restaurants look for guac-ready avocados, while retailers look for fruit with shelf-life.”

TECHNOLOGY APPLIED

Retailers, meanwhile, should recognize the role technology plays in ripening and supply chain handling, especially as consumers now purchase and receive produce through a variety of channels.

“The new ripening rooms are a must if you want to be competitive in the future of home delivery,” says Dennis Kihlstadius, chief executive at Produce Technical Services, Bemidji, MN.

Modern technology is moving more of the science into ripening.

“It is starting to make the system more efficient and taking some of the old tribal knowledge out of the equation,” says Kihlstadius. “The newer ripening rooms can heat on one side and cool on the other, making the investment into new ripening rooms pay off in less than two years.”

“Just look at the store pickers for home pickup or delivery. Do you think they have been trained to know what is ripe and what is good? No. They are just filling an order, and if you do not have the right degree of ripeness to give that customer a good eating experience, you have lost that battle.”
— Dennis Kihlstadius, Produce Technical Services, Bemidji, MN

Technological advances “have definitely increased efficiency and retailers’ control of the ripening process, with the ultimate goal being to empower retailers to give their shoppers more of the fruit they want,” Goldfield says. “The move to forced-air ripening rooms has resulted in greater consistency and precision in setting humidity and temperature, which for many retailers, has led to noticeable energy savings. Predictive AI is also finding its way more into produce ripening in the form of ripeners leveraging algorithms to help better manage timing, temperature set points and outturn color.”

Ivan Brown, senior director of marketing at Fresh Del Monte North America, Coral Gables, FL, says the ripening process has to be approached carefully.

“We utilize pressurized ripening rooms to ripen avocados and bananas, which are energy efficient and can ripen anywhere from 20-42 pallets of fruit at once,” he says, “equating to thousands of individual pieces of fruit and roughly 38,400 pounds of bananas. We also manually trigger ripening for avocados and bananas to ensure a visible uniformity of ripening stages.”

In practice, the systems used at D’Arrigo allow the company to ripen without having to devote the same number of manhours to monitoring and adjusting systems, as the technology “is more accurate. You’re measuring the actual levels and status of a product in real time,” says D’Arrigo.

Levin says technology today “is evolving faster than ever. Ripening used to be more of a trial-based approach, where you could turn up or down temperature to see how long the fruit will take to ripen. Now the technology is data-driven, and it can more or less map out the ideal ripening schedule as needed for you.”

Critical factors in getting the product from the ripening room into the shopper’s cart include keeping product fresh in store, with rotation key.

“Technology has emerged and is continually improving,” says Calavo’s Shore. “Ripening rooms can be controlled from your phone, providing more flexibility with changes on the fly if needed. Dry matter, a key maturity index, and time of season and country of origin requires longer or shorter durations in the ripening room, as well as duration of ethylene conditioning. Late-season fruit will only take 1-3 days to fully ripen.”

According to Alberto Lizondro, director of quality assurance and regulatory affairs at Fyffes North America, Coral Gables, FL, “There is new AI-driven software, such as Strella, being introduced for use in ripening rooms to assist or potentially automate parts of the ripening process. In my opinion, this technology can serve as a valuable tool to support ripeners, but it should not replace the human element. Critical tasks, such as taking multiple pulp temperatures, assessing the internal condition of fruit samples, and determining color stage ranges, still require human judgment and expertise.”

Although he says ripening hasn’t changed dramatically since the advent of advanced pressurized rooms, Joe Menei, ripening manager at John Vena, says, “We are able to better monitor ethylene and CO2 levels, while also being able to ripen more fruit at a time.”

Florent Philippot, chief executive of ZGroup USA, Miami, FL, says the ripening units his company has developed, which are built into 20- and 40-foot mobile containers, offer flexibility so that companies that want to get into ripening or expand existing operations can do so with a relatively small investment.

As such, ZGroup allows companies to begin ripening “without risking too much,” he says.

PEAR, MANGO NECESSITIES

With pears, education about ripening is important, and it helps if store personnel can share an understanding of how the process works with shoppers.

CarrieAnn Arias, president and chief executive, USA Pears, Milwaukie, OR, observes that many people don’t know that pears are one of the few fruits that don’t ripen on the tree, so shoppers need an idea of how to continue the process themselves.

“One thing we like to reiterate with consumers is there is no right level of ripeness,” Arias says. “It’s all a matter of personal taste, preference and use.”

“One thing we like to reiterate with consumers is there is no right level of ripeness. It’s all a matter of personal taste, preference and use.”
— CarrieAnn Arias, USA Pears, Milwaukie, OR

At Crespo Organics, Rio Rico, AZ, Nissa Pierson says that, with mangos, there is no perfect ripening moment due to taste and varietal considerations. As such, mangos also require consumer ripening education to ensure satisfaction.

“Real education: what variety they have, what the growing regions are like, what stage it’s in, and how it will operate as time moves,” she says, “and what you can do with it at all stages of ripeness.”

She advises retailers to differentiate when it comes to mangos.

“Retailers tend to handle all mangos the same, and they are not the same fruit,” she says. “A Keitt is ripe when it’s still green. An Ataulfo has a narrow ripening window that requires entirely different handling than a Tommy Atkins, which is far more cold-chain resilient and holds longer at each stage.”