Web retail uses solid board made from tomato plants
Web retailers prefer packaging their special products in solid board enriched with tomato plants. The “Verse Oogst Box”, an online ordering service from The Greenery for directly ordering fresh fruits and vegetables from the grower, is a great example of this. The “Verse Oogst Box” is made from solid board enriched with tomato plant fibres and can hold 10 kg of fruit and vegetables. The Harvest House growers cooperative also packages tomatoes in solid board bowls enriched with tomato plant fibres. Harvest House delivers these bowls, in two variants of 250 g and 750 g, to HelloFresh, the international online ordering service for fresh meal ingredients.
The consumer who ends up with this type of packaging via these online ordering services is made aware of a special development. Once a year, a residual flow of 85 million kg of tomato plants is released and composted by the growers. Instead of composting, it is possible now to turn these plants into a valuable raw material that, in combination with old paper fibres, can be processed into solid board. This unique production process takes place at the SOLIDUS SOLUTIONS plants, where the solid board is further converted into a large variety of packaging.
This allows tomatoes to be packaged in their own plant fibre! In addition, the packaging made of this solid board enriched with tomato plant fibres, is totally recyclable. Thus the raw materials are reused to the maximum extent and we contribute to the circular economy.
To arrive at this development, SOLIDUS SOLUTIONS has been collaborating for the past few years with a unique consortium of partners in the Westland region, called Bio Base Westland. SOLIDUS SOLUTIONS already produced packaging for 3 kg and 5 kg of tomatoes from this type of solid board.
During the Fruit Logistica on 3, 4 and 5 February in Berlin, SOLIDUS SOLUTIONS will have more to show about the developments in enriching solid board with tomato plant fibres.
