Can plants solve one of the world's biggest problems?

For the last quarter-century, Luiz Beling has chased a career defined by solving critical challenges in food and agriculture. It’s why the newest CEO of Apeel Sciences was drawn to the leadership role he assumed in February this year.

Apeel’s core technology is a plant-based protection or coating made from ingredients found in fruits and vegetables that, when applied to fresh produce like lemons or limes, slows the water loss and oxidation that can cause spoilage, thereby extending shelf life, reducing spoilage and ultimately increasing retail profitability and consumer satisfaction, the company says.

To learn more about the CEO’s vision for Apeel, The Packer recently connected with Beling over Zoom.

Beling began the conversation by saying Apeel’s mission to reduce food waste and improve the world’s food production systems were hugely compelling as he considered joining the California-based company.

He was equally intrigued by its technology.

“I wanted to see how the technology was developed,” Beling said. “How good is it? Does it do what it’s supposed to do. Does it extend shelf life? Does it allow enhancements to the production system by preserving food and reducing waste?

“Once I had a peek behind the curtain, I was blown away by the technology — it does even more than I imagined,” he said.

Beyond extending shelf life, Apeel’s technology has the potential to significantly impact the produce industry — from opening new export markets for fresh product that historically couldn’t reach the intended destination without loss of quality to eliminating plastics from the produce department over time, he says.

“This technology reduces loss and preserves quality throughout the supply chain, all the way to the end consumer,” Beling said. “I initially thought of it in terms of offering the consumer extended shelf life, but in reality, it offers many operational efficiencies and enhancements to the supply chain.”

The CEO’s vision for Apeel is as simple as it is complex: to improve food security and food production systems by creating technologies that reduce food waste and increase consumer access to fresh food.

“The coating we put on fruits and vegetables extends shelf life and has many implications in giving food access to more people, reducing waste, enhancing the quality of that fruit and vegetable throughout the supply chain and, hopefully, actually making food more affordable as well,” he said.


On track to reduce food waste

Apeel is now working to create an ecosystem that goes beyond its plant-based coating solution to include digitization of the supply chain through data and analytics, as well as thought leadership around enhancing food production.

Its accumulation of data and quality metrics on avocado ripeness has informed the company’s RipeTrack technology, a nondestructive tool to test avocado ripeness. By analyzing the firmness, oil content and dry matter of the avocado, RipeTrack offers an alternative to the penetrometer test for avocados that measures the fruit’s firmness through the insertion of a probe, which destroys the avocado.

But while RipeTrack offered an alternative to invasive probes with the use of a durometer, Apeel’s protective coating can sometimes lead to greener fruit than is optimal for merchandising at retail.

“Our coating does a great job preserving food and making it last longer, but with avocados shipped to stores green and hard, our technology made the avocado stay green and hard longer,” Beling explained. “That meant retailers weren’t getting avocados that are ripe and ready to eat, which impacts the customer experience.”

RipeTrack is also more accurate when measuring riper fruit than the probe, says Beling. Through software that allows the retailer and supplier to see the quality and ripeness of the fruit, they can better manage the mix of avocados at various stages of ripeness shipped to stores.

“As retailers adopt this technology, they have a way to fine tune avocado selection in-store,” said Beling, who added that RipeTrack offers greater flexibility in the supply chain as retailers can use the technology to ripen avocados in-store, which also lowers the cost of implementation.

Apeel already is seeing a correlation between RipeTrack adoption and increased retail avocado sales, says Beling.

“And as retailers receive more ripe avocados to their stores, Apeel is also helping reduce the risk of shrink with its coating which extends the life of the fruit,” he added.


Shift to a problem-solving mindset

“As a science-based company and an innovator, Apeel started by developing technology and then trying to find a market for it,” said Beling, who sees Apeel continuing to innovate while being more “customer centric in what we do.”

“There’s been a shift, where now we identify the problems that exist in the supply chain and solve for that,” he said. “We’re also engaging with the industry to better understand their problems and needs.”

Currently Apeel’s technology is used for avocados and citrus and has implications for apples, melons, tomatoes, mangoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, dragon fruit and more, says Beling of the company that is eyeing expansion into more categories, countries and technology solutions.

“We have a couple of other products in the pipeline that solve supply chain problems, enhance the quality of produce and reduce food waste,” said Beling, who added that Apeel is currently exploring fungal diseases during pre-harvest through plant-based solutions. He says the new products are set to debut in the next 12 to 18 months.

To realize Beling’s vision of improved food security and food waste reduction, he says Apeel’s technology will need to be more widely adopted. The company is working to achieve this goal by demonstrating the value of its technology to customers from grower-packer-shippers to marketers to retailers and, ultimately, consumers.

“As these technologies are widely adopted, then you will see the world fulfill the mission of reducing food waste,” Beling said. “But the first goal is to get the technology into the hands of the key players so they can enhance their supply chain and have a major impact on the planet.”


Apeel-ing sustainability stats

“We estimate that through the adoption of our technology and extending shelf life that we prevented over 60 million pieces of fruit from going bad in 2023, and that’s significantly higher than where we were in years past,” Beling said.

Keeping produce fresher longer also conserves billions of gallons of water annually, says Beling, who estimates Apeel’s technology contributed to the conservation of 2.7 billion liters of water last year.

Fewer greenhouse gas emissions came from the decomposing produce thanks to Apeel, the technology of which prevented the release of over 9 million kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, he said.

And Beling says the 12-year-old company, which only commercialized its technology in the last three to four years, is just getting started.

“I want Apeel to become a global leader in sustainability and food preservation and do that through a culture of innovation and industry partnerships,” he said.