Technology Licensing and Applications Development
The Future of FreshnessTM
Global Fresh Foods provides licenses for its technology in three primary categories: Sub-primal meat cuts, retail cuts, and bakery. Conventional MAP/VAC packaging systems are very expensive to apply and not capable of enabling the fresh shelf life that Global Fresh Foods technologies deliver.
Sub-Primal Meat Cuts
Conventional MAP/VAC packaging technologies are used extensively to facilitate distribution and ocean shipment of billions of pounds of fresh sub-primal meat cuts per year globally. However, conventional MAP/VAC technologies require expensive packaging equipment, materials, labor, operators, and maintenance and the packaging processes are notorious production bottlenecks. All of these MAP/VAC systems are applied at the individual sub-primal cut level requiring significant labor to pack each cut into an expensive barrier bag which must then be either vacuum packaged (VAC) or evacuated and back flushed with CO2 or other gas mixture (MAP), sealed, and packed into a shipping carton (all without causing any leaks). While these conventional packaging systems are expensive, MAP/VAC technologies can extend the fresh shelf life of many fresh red meats and pork adequately for substantial distribution times. However, these technologies and systems do not produce ultra low oxygen, high CO2 environments required by the more oxidatively labile fresh meats like lamb, poultry, and many seafoods for maximum fresh shelf life extensions. Because SAF-D® is a bulk system that can be serviced/gas flushed "off line" with inexpensive equipment and without the need to pack individual bags, the costs are much lower than conventional MAP/VAC, and no production bottleneck is created. Furthermore, SAF-D® allows for much longer shelf life once the environment is released.
Retail Meat Cuts
Retailers pay $0.30 to $0.90 more per pound for case ready packaged retail meat cuts vs. cutting sub-primal cuts into retail packages in store. As a result, more sophisticated and expensive MAP/VAC packaging systems are being increasingly employed for "case ready" packaged meats in the retail fresh meat supply chain. These case ready MAP/VAC technologies are expensive and often suffer from inadequate shelf life due to the inability to achieve ultra low oxygen with high CO2 environments up to the point of retail display. These technologies also use carbon monoxide to preserve the red color of the meat. Although the FDA allows the use of carbon monoxide on fresh meat to preserve color, the practice has become increasingly unpopular with most retailers. Recently, oxygen scavengers are being employed that do not work well in high CO2 environments resulting in microbial spoilage sooner to maintain better color on shelf. SAF-D® will allow for the bulk application of ultra low oxygen, high CO2 environments for the distribution of case ready meats in inexpensive, conventional packaging materials that will have both superior color and microbial/spoilage shelf life on shelf.
Bakery
The bakery industry today suffers from very high production and distribution costs due to the short shelf life of most of their products. The margins in bakery do not allow for expensive MAP/VAC packaging, and vacuum is physically incompatible with the delicate nature of most fresh bakery items. Global Fresh Foods' SAF-D® bulk architecture in combination with its ultra low oxygen, high CO2/nitrogen environment could revolutionize the cost structure of the bakery industry by significantly extending the shelf life of many fresh bakery products and allowing for centralized production in a few high volume facilities.
How To License
If you are interested in an evaluation to assess how the SAF-D® System can revolutionize your supply chain, please contact:
Larry Bell, at (831)272-4330 or larry.bell@globalfreshfoods.com.