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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Hazel Technologies

Hazel’s New CEO Focused on Diversifying Life Extention Products and Expanding Geographically

Today, produce life extension startup Hazel Technologies named Parker Booth as its new CEO. Booth, who has had a varied career in produce distribution, vertical farming, as well as a stint as general manager of Washington State Correctional Industries, takes on the new role after serving three-plus years as the company’s chief operating officer.

Booth, who has been in the role of CEO on a temporary basis, takes over the role permanently as he replaces Aidan Mouat, who was involved in an accident last September that left the company’s founding CEO fighting for his life. The accident, in which a motorist struck Mouat as he was out walking his dogs (both dogs were killed in the accident) in a suburb of Chicago, has left Mouat unable to fulfill the role as he is still in active recovery. According to Booth, Mouat will remain as an advisor to the company.

I caught up with Booth last week to talk about the state of the company and where he sees things going under his leadership.

Can you give me an update on Hazel and what’s been happening over the past year?

We’re an eight-year-old company, and we’re past the stage of ‘does our technology work?’ It’s been proven that it does. It’s now one of customer adoption and executing our scale-up plans. We’re excited about that. We’ve added some new technology through the acquisition of a company’s assets last year that extend the shelf life of berries, and large berry growers are really latching on to this.

How does this new product differ from Hazel’s sachet product?

Hazel CEO Parker Booth

The intellectual property is a membrane about 10 inches by 10 inches. When you take a pallet of a product like berries, you put this giant bag over the top of it, seal it up, and then inject CO2 in the membrane. Again, it’s very similar to the concept of breathable saddlebags, as you’re allowing co2 to transmit through that membrane and equilibrates at a certain level that inhibits decay for berries, for raspberries in particular. It’s a really proven technology, and we’re excited about that. We’re going to be looking at bananas in Southeast Asia. It has a pallet option, but has a carton option, a little smaller bag with a smaller membrane. And so that just gives us a lot more conversations with the customers.

So Hazel is now a life extension technology company, essentially, with a variety of tools.

Yes, so far in our life, we’ve had 5 billion pounds of produce we’ve used our detection technology on, and we’ve eliminated 400 million pounds in waste. We like to track that metric because that’s our mission.

But that’s it. Shelf life extension that reduces yield loss. And that becomes an actual, very objective data point for the owner of the product. So we can say we’re going to save you ‘X dollars per carton’ or per shipment by using Hazel. That’s a bottom line benefit for them. That savings goes right to the customer’s bottom line.

Can you give me an update on the sachet business?

We had our first customer five years ago, and it’s been ramping up ever since. One change we made is that at the beginning, we were producing our product internally, making our secret sauce, and packing the sachets. About two years ago, we began to outsource manufacturing to third-party contract manufacturer who specializes in this. They use our recipe, they use our quality standards, and we check them on all that. We did this because they can scale to the volume that we need to keep up with the business.

For those who aren’t familiar with your sachet product, can you explain how it works?

There’s a component in there called 1-MCP (short for 1–Methylcyclopropene). It’s been around for a long time, and what we do is combine the 1-MCP into that secret sauce – which has different sorts of materials – into a sachet, and that becomes a very slow release. That’s the benefit of our product. What happens is we attach the materials through a vapor to the ethylene (the natural ripening hormone in fruit) receptors that actually emit ethylene in a product and stop the ethylene from being created.

What other products do you have?

We actually have a product called Datica that senses ethylene, it senses 1-MCP, and so it’s instant feedback for apple long-term storage. It’s an internet-connected device and software that traces the levels of 1-MCP and, as a result, detects the real-time level of the ethylene.

Another product called Hazel Trex is focused on pre-harvest. What that does is it allows growers of, say, kiwis to predict within a day or two accuracy when the bud is going to bloom for kiwis. Now, why is that important? They could hit it with nutrients just prior to that if they knew exactly when it’s going to be. So it’s a cost savings for them.

Was one of the goals after the last funding round to diversify the product portfolio as you become a more mature company?

It was to build out our fundamentals, and expand our product line, but also expand the countries that we’re in. We’re trying to get the footprint expanded. It’s very important in the produce world that you’re in the southern hemisphere as well as the northern hemisphere. That way, you get a year-round cycle, a year-round supply for, say, table grapes. A grower might have table grapes coming out of Peru, which are just ending now, and now you move on to table grapes coming out of California for the US market. We have a plan that, in the next five years, we will be in 23-plus countries with various products.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

CES: Tackling Food Waste With Technology (Video)

The topic of food waste and innovation is so important — in the US alone, $408 billion worth of food is wasted each year. But the topic is too often overlooked when it comes to food tech conversations.

That’s why we invited experts to join us at the CES Food Tech Conference last month to talk about waste at different points in the food supply chain as well as the systemic issues plaguing the global food system.

We welcomed Vonnie Estes, Vice President of Innovation with the International Fresh Produce Association to moderate this panel with participants including Spencer Martin, CEO of Clew, Adian Mouat, Co-Founder & CEO of Hazel Technologies and Tim West, President of True West Ventures LLC.

The full panel — “Tackling Food Waste With Technology” is ready for viewing below.

CES 2022: Hazel Technologies Wants to Extend The Life of Perishable Food

Food waste startup Hazel Technologies started by creating solutions that could integrate into the existing global food chain by taking aim at food packages. In a sit down interview at CES 2022, CEO Aidan Mouat explained the way they think about their solution the way you would with a traditional tech stack. “Hazel is creating a chemical stack where our technology acts as the biochemistry layer to existing food packaging. The inserts are activated using atmospheric chemistry to control certain parameters in perishable food shelf life during storage and transit,” he added.

Today, Hazel Technologies are also working on the supply side, tracking as perishables get from distributors and farms to the grocery shelf. They’re also collecting data, looking at logistics and partnering with larger brands to optimize their own packaging and shipping procedures.

Food waste is clearly going to be a big part of the conversation in the world of food and tech this year. We’re not only seeing hardware and software innovation from food and kitchen companies but in biochemical innovation in places like packaging to keep food edible and safe longer.

Don’t miss this conversation on sustainable packaging tech and the impact on waste with The Spoon’s Mike Wolf and Hazel Technologies’ CEO Aidan Mouat at CES 2022.

CES 2022: The Spoon Interviews Hazel Technologies' Aidan Mouat.

Hazel Technologies Announces New California Hub To Expand Produce Conserving Technology

Starting in the mid-twentieth century, the advent of new fertilizer production technologies allowed the world to grow crops at a new scale. While that so-called Green Revolution helped producers to feed more people than ever, it also created a focus on crop production rather than systems efficiency. And that imbalanced focus has led to a worldwide agricultural system that wastes about a third of the food it produces, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

During a stint as a chemistry fellow at the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University, Dr. Aidan Mouat wondered what could happen if we used chemistry to create a new revolution — one that targeted the food supply chain. That idea led to the 2015 launch of Hazel Technologies, a Chicago-based company that manufactures high-tech produce packaging and storage solutions to extend shelf life.

Mouat, Hazel’s co-founder and CEO, told The Spoon that the company’s technologies will save about 500 million pounds of food from going to waste this year. And with a funding arsenal that includes about $90 million in private equity as well as grants from the USDA, the company is working on expanding, starting with a new hub in Fresno, Calif.

A primer on how Hazel’s technology works: The company’s packaging products extend the shelf lives of perishable foods, but not by adding chemicals to the foods themselves. Instead, they release ingredients (in the form of vapor) that help to control the atmosphere around the foods. One product, a sachet the size of a sugar packet, releases ingredients that counteract ethylene — a molecule that accumulates in the atmosphere around packaged fruits and vegetables, and triggers metabolic responses that make them go bad.

Hazel’s Aidan Mouat

Hazel also offers technologies that slow down microbial growth and sprouting. The company’s products come in different forms, from pads and papers that can be inserted into packages, to larger-scale solutions for entire warehouses.

The new Fresno location will bring Hazel closer to California’s bounty of fruit and vegetable producers, facilitating closer cooperation. “In order to do the best analytical postharvest work we can do, we need to be able to simulate the supply chain as perfectly as possible,” Mouat told The Spoon. “And that requires us to be on site with our customers, performing commercial-scale studies in order to truly understand the full ROI and impact that our products can provide for them.”

For instance, Hazel will be able to perform more on-site trials for customers like the Specialty Crop Company, the world’s largest fig producer. It’s the difference between “sending some fruit back east, or getting it to them today, so they can throw in a sachet and pack it today, and get back that real-time data,” Erik Herman, a farming and sales officer at the Specialty Crop Company, told The Spoon.

Mouat said that Hazel has broken ground on the new hub, and that the team is hoping to open the office by the end of this year.

Along with a customer support office and research center, the Fresno facility will incorporate a microdistillery. “As part of our zero waste focus, and in keeping with one of my various hobby interests, we do a lot of distillation of fermented food,” Mouat said. “It’s a great way to make sure that we squeeze out every last calorie, even from our test fruit.”

In the future, Hazel plans to expand its presence in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, establishing a network of food science research centers. The company will also work on expanding its range of product offerings to protect meats and other foods outside of the produce category.

Hazel also has its eyes on another kind of growth. The company wants to apply its technology at all of the stops along the food supply chain, from the pre-farm stage all the way to retail. The team even hopes to launch a line of consumer products sometime in the next few years.

To Mouat, the key to Hazel’s expansion lies in the accessibility and adaptability of the company’s packaging solutions. Hazel’s products can be integrated into existing supply chains around the world without the need for investment in new infrastructure or heavy equipment.

“You’re not going to be able to protect every crop on the planet, every category of food, with the one-channel approach of reconfiguring supply chains to suit the benefits of some new technology you’re trying to offer,” Mouat said. “If you want to approach a truly democratic solution for world agriculture, you have to lower the use barrier as much as possible — and we’ve done that.”

OneThird Raises €1.5M for Its Food-Waste-Fighting Tech

Netherlands-based food tech company OneThird announced today it has raised €1.5 million ($1.8 million USD) for its shelf-life-prediction technology that helps growers, retailers, and distributors cut down on food waste. SHIFT Invest and Oost NL participated in the round, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The new funds will partly go towards further developing OneThird’s tech, which it calls a “fresh produce quality prediction platform.” The platform consists of a handheld scanner, near-infrared sensors, artificial intelligence, and data analytics used in combination to “look inside” the produce and determine its remaining shelf life.

“Our unique prediction technology allows quality inspectors throughout the food supply chain to get immediate feedback about shelf life and other quality parameters of fresh produce and take better decisions,” Marco Snikkers, founder of OneThird, said in today’s press release. 

OneThird says that its technology can work in multiple stages of the supply chain. Growers, for example, can use the platform to determine where they should ship different batches of produce. Distributors can use it to make routing decisions, while retailers can train their staff to assess the freshness of produce in the store.

The point of all this, of course, is to cut down on food waste. As underscored by the OneThird company name, a third of all the world’s food goes to waste each year, with $408 billion spent in the U.S. alone to grow, process, transport, and store food that is never consumed. The waste has a number of consequences, from environmental degradation to people going hungry to lost money for retailers, distributors, and growers.

OneThird joins a growing list of companies bringing a variety of food-waste-fighting solutions to market, from Hazel’s packaging inserts to food redistribution companies like Too Good to Go to Apeel’s edible coating.

OneThird will also use its new funds to expand retail pilots of its platform and build out its technical team by acquiring AI specialist firm Impact Analytics.

Food Tech News: A New Potato Preserving Technology, Zomato Closes $660M Round

If you need a break from COVID-19 and vaccine-related news, you’re in the right place. In this week’s Food Tech News, we rounded up pieces on a new technology that helps preserve potatoes, Zomato’s latest funding round, a holiday Pepsi flavor, and carbon-neutral oat milk.

Funding for potato preserving technology

Hazel Technologies received an undisclosed amount in grant money this week from the USDA for its new potato preserving technology. The technology is called Hazel Root, which looks like a small package and is placed in a bin of potatoes after harvesting. The small package emits an undisclosed active ingredient that prevents potatoes from prematurely sprouting. Prior to this new development, Hazel Technologies focused on preserving fresh fruits for longer and has received a total of $900,000 in grant money. Last year, the company also raised $13 million in funding in an oversubscribed series B round.

Zomato closes $660M series J funding round

Indian delivery service Zomato closed its series J funding round this week, totaling $660 million USD. The recent round saw participation from Kora, Tiger Global, Luxor, Fidelity, D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae, and Steadview. Zomato is currently valued at $3.9 billion USD, and Deepinder Goyal, the CEO of Zomato, shared that the company may launch its IPO sometime in the first half of next year.

Cocoa Cola for Christmas

On Twitter this week, PepsiCo announced that a new flavor is in the works: “Cocoa Cola.” Pepsi said if its tweet reached 2,021 reposts, the company would begin production of the new flavor. As of now, that tweet has been reposted 4,400 times so far, so it’s safe to say the new drink will go into production. It will have tasting notes of chocolate, marshmallow, and the classic cola flavor, and is expected to reach stores sometime this winter. Near Thanksgiving this year, PepsiCo also released a holiday flavor: a limited batch of apple pie-flavored soda.

Carbon neutral oat milk

Minor Figures, a London-based company that produces oat milk, announced this week it has become carbon neutral. The company partnered with EcoFye, a firm that helps companies lower their carbon footprint and purchase carbon credit for carbon offsetting projects. Becoming carbon-neutral has been quite the buzzword this year, with major companies like Starbucks, Amazon, and Microsoft also making the pledge.

Produce Grower Houweling’s Group Partners With Apeel to Ditch Plastic-Wrapped Cucumbers

Greenhouse vegetable grower Houweling’s Group announced this week it has partnered with Apeel to launch its plastic-free cucumbers at select Walmart locations, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Cucumbers very often land on grocery store shelves shrink-wrapped in plastic. This is done to protect the skin, which on a variety like an English cucumber, is especially thin. The plastic wrapping also extends the shelf life of the cucumber once it’s in your fridge.

Apeel, which raised $250 million in May of this year, is in the business of extending produce shelf life without the need for extra packaging materials. The company makes an edible “peel” that can provide the protection and shelf-life extension of plastic. It does this with a foodsafe powder derived from plant oils. When applied to produce, it creates a barrier that keeps water and oxygen out. Apeel has developed different proprietary coatings for different produce types, including apples, avocados, and, now, cucumbers. 

Apeel is one of several companies working to make produce last longer. It’s most notable counterparts right now are Stix Fresh, which makes a sticker that can extend produce shelf life by two weeks when placed on the fruit or vegetable, and Hazel Technologies, whose packaging inserts for bulk fruit and vegetable boxes slow ripening. Apeel’s most obviously parallel competitor is Sufresca, a company that also makes an edible coating for produce.

The partnership with Houweling’s Group marks the first time Apeel has used its coating technology to not just extend the life of produce but also do away with extra packaging. Houweling’s said in this week’s press release that every 500,000 cases of English cucumbers shipped with Apeel’s coating eliminates the equivalent of 820,000 single-use plastic water bottles from the supply chain. 

Wrap It Up: Innovation in Edible Solutions to Extend Food Lifespans (a Spoon Plus Report)

Suppliers, especially large warehouse distributors, have several strategies they currently use to extend the lifespan of produce. One is refrigeration. Produce can be stored in cold warehouses to slow down the ripening process and make it last longer. Another is to install vents in the warehouses to remove ethylene, the gas that causes fruit to ripen, from storage. Some warehouses even use gases like nitrogen and sulphur to counteract the effects of ethylene, thus keeping fruit preserved in an unripe state until they’re ready to ship to retailers. Some fruits, like lemons and apples, are also coated in an artificial wax to keep them from rotting.

All of these solutions have their drawbacks. Vents are expensive to install, using gases to regulate ethylene is not proven to be effective, and artificial wax is unappetizing. Regulating produce freshness at warehouses also does not help once that fruit or vegetable has left the supplier and is sitting on a retail shelf or in a consumer kitchen.

However, over the past several years, innovators have begun experimenting with new ways to extend the lifespan of fresh produce. These solutions are meant to be a more sustainable, healthy, and versatile alternative to current practices used in warehouses.

This report is available to subscribers of Spoon Plus, includes analysis of key players Apeel, Sufresca, Stixfresh, and Hazel Technologies, a look at opportunities in this fast-changing space, the impact of COVID and a look forward at what’s next.

New subscribers to Spoon Plus can use discount code NEWMEMBER to get 15% off an annual plan today. Go here to learn more. 

Sufresca Gets a $500,000 Investment For Its Edible Food Coating Solution That Fights Food Waste

Israeli startup Sufresca, who makes an edible coating that extends the life of fruits and vegetables, has raised a $500,000 seed round from agtech VC Rimonim, according to AgFunder News. The round brings Sufresca’s total funding so far to $1.3 million. 

Sufresca’s edible fruit and vegetable coating is meant to extend the shelf life of post-harvest produce and in doing so cut down on food waste in the home. An edible coating also eliminates the need to use plastic packaging, such a shrink-wrap, for produce items in the store. Sufresca’s technology uses liquid formulas that when applied to fruits and vegetables creates a “breathable coating” that the company claims can extend shelf life by several weeks. The approach is similar to post-harvest food waste solutions currently being done by Apeel Sciences, whose plant-based powder can be mixed with water then applied to produce to prevent spoilage.

While Apeel is currently focused on avocados, Sufresca is starting out with fruits and vegetables for which no edible coating solution exists right now. Think tomatoes, garlic, and pomegranate arils, as opposed to apples or oranges, which typically get coated in wax. The company says future products will include cucumbers, melons, bananas, and asparagus, among others. 

Coating fruits and vegetables is one way to fight food waste and reduce spoilage. There are a growing number of other solutions coming to market. Hazel Technologies makes biodegradable packaging inserts that extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. StixFresh, who won the Startup Showcase award at this year’s SKS, has created a sticker that when applied to produce releases protective compounds that cloak the fruit or vegetable to extend its shelf life. 

Roughly one third of the world’s food goes to waste each year, and 14 percent of that food is lost between harvest and retail, according to the United Nations. Startups up and down the supply chain are now testing ways to combat this problem. We can expect to see many more food preservation tactics like those of Sufresca and Apeel as the food waste problem gets bigger and we (hopefully) get smarter about fighting it. 

According to AgFunder, Sufresca, which was founded in 2018, is aiming to have at least some of its products reach Europe and North America within two years.  

Apeel to Launch Its Longer-Lasting Produce in Kroger Stores Across the U.S.

Apeel Sciences, whose plant-based coatings extend the shelf life of produce, announced today it has partnered with Kroger to make its longer-lasting avocados available at over 1,100 of the grocery retailer’s stores in the U.S.

This widespread launch follows a pilot the two companies launched in 2018 in select stores around the Midwest.

Apeel was born out of a concern over the amount of food in the country that gets wasted every year due to food spoilage. Roughly 40 percent of food waste happens in the home, as anyone whose ever bought an avocado and had it go bad almost immediately knows.

To fight this, Apeel makes a plant-based powder food producers can mix with water to and coat over produce items before they get shipped out for distribution and retail. That coating creates a barrier that retains the water in side the produce and regulates how fast oxygen gets into the plant. Cloaked in this powder, produce stays fresher longer and requires less refrigeration. According to the company’s website, this has led to a more than 50 percent decrease in food waste. Bonus: the produce doesn’t have to be coated in the usual wax covering, either.

Apeel avocados are already available in the European market through a partnership with Belgium-based importer Nature’s Pride. And this past August, Apeel raised a $70 million Series C round.

The company is also using its partnership with Kroger to release two new produce items: limes and asparagus. According to the press release, those will be available at stores in Kroger’s hometown of Cincinnati this fall.

Apeel’s expansion comes at a time when more companies fighting food waste in the home are starting to emerge. What was only a few months ago a very small category in the food waste landscape now has players like Hazel Technologies, whose biodegradable packaging inserts extend the life of produce, Stix Fresh, who says it can double your avocado’s shelf life with a sticker, and Cambridge Crops, who also makes a protective layer for produce. We’ll undoubtedly be seeing many more companies come to market as consumers start to wake up to the reality that the food waste battle has to be fought first and foremost at home.

Hazel Technologies Closes $13 million Series B Round for Food Waste Tech

Chicago-based Hazel Technologies announced today it has closed a $13 million oversubscribed Series B funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to $17.8 million. The Series B round was led by Pangea Ventures and S2G Ventures, with participation from The Grantham Foundation and Asahi Kasei Ventures, and returning investors Rhapsody Venture Partners, Serra Ventures, and Valley Oak Investments, among others.

Hazel’s technology tackles food waste by increasing the shelf life of produce. The USDA-funded company makes packaging inserts in the form of sachets with 1-MCP technology that get placed in boxes of bulk produce at harvest time. The sachets (see image above) are biodegradable, 3.5cm packets that can be tossed amid the produce and emit a vapor that reduces the respiration rate of produce and increases resistance to the plant hormone ethylene. Doing so slows the decay of produce, increasing its shelf life of fruits and vegetables.

Right now, Hazel’s sachets work for for a number of produce types, among them avocados, plums, honeydew, and okra. The company has worked on over 100 pilots with large U.S. growers such as Dresick Farms International and Mission Produce.

In the realm of food waste, products that extend shelf life make up a small-but-growing area. Stix Fresh says it can double the shelf life of an avocado (among other types of produce) with a sticker that goes on the surface of the fruit and releases protective vapors. Apeel Sciences, which raised $70 million in 2018 and is backed by Bill Gates, makes a plant-based powder companies can mix with water and use to coat their produce before distribution. Cambridge Crops makes a protective layer for crops out of silk protein.

Hazel’s CEO, Aidan Mouat, told AgFunder News the company chose sachets because it’s easier to add them to existing packaging: “We decided to make a better delivery mechanism and to integrate with packaging that anyone in the world could use at any time.”

According to the press release, Hazel’s new funds will go towards growing its product line, launching new technologies, and adding new hires.