Sinclair showcases compostable fruit label at Fruit Logistica

Since launching Sinclair-T55 with the Zespri Group at Fruit Attraction in October 2024, Sinclair says interest has been high as the industry looks to adopt environmentally conscious packaging solutions.

The company featured a time-lapse video showcase of its compostable fruit labels at Fruit Logistica 2025.

Sinclair says fruit labels have delivered added value for retailers, branders and consumers for over 40 years. The fruit label is a compact and minimized packaging solution that provides essential POS product information for consumers and retailers. As part of the marketing mix, it allows brands to promote fresh produce characteristics and build a relationship with consumers. For retailers, the label ensures accurate checkout — price and produce type — as well as traceability.

Sinclair says the fruit label's ability to differentiate produce allows brands to build relationships with consumers on origin, variety, taste and quality, all key buying triggers. The company says all of this is possible with Sinclair-T55, a certified compostable packaging solution that can be as small as 18-by-10 millimeters and weigh as little as 9.3 grams per square meter, and at the end of life, contributes to soil-enriching compost.

The company says the Sinclair-T55 fruit label is food-safe, certified compostable and complies with several leading composting standards. The label meets the European Unionwide industrial composting standard EN 73432, as well as the French and Australian home composting standards, NFT 57-800 and AS 5870, respectively, according to Sinclair.

This compliance is further demonstrated by Sinclair-T55 achieving the Din Certco and TÜV Austria certification for both industrial and home composting, along with the ABA certification for home composting, the company says.

Sinclair says the industrial fruit label is designed to meet the demands of automatic, high-speed application in packinghouses. With labeling speeds of up to 720 fruit per minute, humidity and water present, plus wide temperature variances, label conformity and adhesion to fresh produce is key, says the company, which added that the new Sinclair T55 label meets these challenges with performance equivalent to conventional Polyethylene and Polypropylene labels or, on some produce types, surpassing it.

“So, as well as being the highest-performing certified home compostable label available, at the end of its life, the label will break down and biodegrade to become part of usable, soil-enriching compost within 365 days (or sooner),” the company said in a news release.

The time-lapse video presented at Fruit Logistica showed certified compostable fruit labels on banana skin, kiwifruit skin, apple skin and organic skin in home composting conditions.