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By Paul Tullis More stories by Paul Tullis October 27, 2020, 12:01 AM EDT From Once smallholder farmers in the Kenyan village of Masii have picked their crops, all they can do is wait until a buyer trucks through.The system works fairly well for beans and corn, but mangoes—the area’s other main crop—spoil more quickly.If the trader is late, they rot.
“We lose market because the mangoes go spotty,” says Obadiah Kisaingu, chair of the Masii Horticultural Farmers’ Cooperative Society.He estimates 40% of the co-op’s mango crop is lost to spoilage.But a simple coating could change that.A California company has created a formulation that doubles—or for some foods even triples—the shelf life of fresh produce, enabling farmers like Kisaingu to access far-off, larger markets.
Apeel Sciences Inc.
, based in Santa Barbara, exceeded a $1 billion valuation in May when it received $250 million in financing from Oprah Winfrey and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd., adding to earlier investments from Andreessen Horowitz and other venture capitalists.(Bloomberg LP, which owns , is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz.) On Oct.27 the International Finance Corp., the World Bank’s private-sector arm, announced a $30 million investment in Apeel, a move that will open networks in East Africa, South America, and, pending regulatory approval, Southeast Asia.Singapore-owned investment company Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd.
and food-focused impact investor Astanor Ventures are partners in the equity deal.
“This is a way to almost leapfrog the necessity of cold-storage chains and bring products to mature markets, where farmers can get better value for their crops,” says Stephanie von Friedeburg, the IFC’s interim managing director.More time for fresh produce on grocers’ shelves means less food waste—a $2.6 trillion problem, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.Project Drawdown, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that analyzes climate solutions, says fixing it would be one of the most effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The investment brings Apeel closer to what James Rogers, 35, envisioned when he founded the company eight years ago.Rogers, who has a Ph.D.
in materials science, wanted to solve the problem for food much in the same way that oxide barriers preventing rust have achieved for steel.He developed a natural, tasteless, and odorless protective coating from plant material—stems, leaves, skins, basically whatever gets discarded—that maintains the freshness of food for longer by holding water in and keeping oxygen out.The product extends the sweet spot between ripening and rot .
And best of all, the treated produce doesn’t require refrigeration, says Rogers, the chief executive officer.
Apeel traveled a long road to get here.It was six years from launch before products applied with the substance were in stores.Whether the company can cost-effectively reach small farmers in far-flung areas still remains a challenge.
Rival technologies include Bluapple, which isolates excess ethylene—a hormone that triggers ripening in some produce—and antimicrobial packaging.Blasting foods with blue light, radio waves, or plasma has shown potential in the lab, but those methods aren’t yet commercialized.
Apeel-treated fruits and vegetables are already in the largest grocery chains in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, and the U.S., as well as Walmart Inc., and the company recently gained regulatory approval in Kenya, Uganda, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador.“We have 50% less waste of Apeel-treated produce and 30% more sales,” says Mario Slunitschek, a vice president at Edeka, which operates more than 11,000 grocery stores in Germany.
The lack of access to cold-storage infrastructure raises farmers’ costs while reducing their income.Fruit picked too early doesn’t develop as much sugar, so it’s less sweet.But harvesting late risks the fruit going to rot.So Kisaingu’s co-op members gather only a small amount at a time, as the fruit ripens.
Repeated trips to the field are labor-intensive, while frequent visits from the traders raise their costs and reduce the amount they’ll pay for the co-op’s mangoes.Such stagnated harvesting closes the doors of big distributors, which want to make large purchases all at once and fly tree-ripened fruit overseas, or mature the earlier-picked produce in cold storage in Europe, a key market.
“Apeel has huge potential to turn subsistence farmers in Africa into commercial farmers,” says Christina Owen, senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped Apeel launch with a $100,000 grant.“That means more money in pockets, and more food in bellies.”.
