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NatuWrap promises longer shelf life in a natural way

By
Tim Linden

A biochemistry professor at Texas State University and his students began working about a decade ago on an all-natural way to slow the decaying process and extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables.

The work led Dr. Gary Beall, who has since retired from the university, to develop NatuWrap as the signature product of Nabaco Inc., a San Marcos, TX, company that is manufacturing the product and currently selling it mostly to fruit growers in the Pacific Northwest and Spain. Though produce industry veteran Jamie Strachan, CEO of the company, said the all-natural, solution works equally well on all fruits or vegetables.

sdfBeall said that NatuWrap’s patented formulation consists of several natural components, including clay from the earth and tree extracts. Because they are naturally occurring, the core products have an inexhaustible supply. The formulation is water-soluble, bio-degradable and the company claims it is safe for human consumption and the environment. It has been certified organic by OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) and WSDA. Its water solubility also allows it to be easily washed off.

Beall called it a “wonderfully structured film” that works as an oxygen barrier by leaving a residue on the fruit or vegetable comprised of more than 1,000 layers yet 20 times thinner than a human hair. The company website states: “Once mixed with water, utilizing Nabaco’s proprietary mixing systems, the formulas can be added to dip tanks, wash lines, drenchers, spray bars, cooling tubes or fogging, that deliver residual protection without effecting taste, texture, or odor.”

After launching Nabaco, which stands for Natural Barrier Company, the founders were able to attract outside investors to go after low-hanging fruit on the tree — so to speak — such as pears, apples, cherries and citrus.

These fruit categories use coatings liberally, such as carnauba wax, and those grower-shippers are familiar with their advantages.

Beall said NatuWrap is far superior than wax in many different respects. Most importantly, it extends shelf life significantly. It can also be used to deliver other post-harvest beneficial additives to the fruit or vegetable product such as a fungicide. In comparing it to other products, Beall said it is far more effective and is easily removed, which is not the case with wax, for example.

He called NatuWrap “a processing aid” that offers additional advantages depending upon the fruit in question. For example, Beall noted that scuff is a common problem with pears as they go through the process of being washed and packed. Scuff affects the outside appearance, which makes the pears less attractive to consumers. Beall said pears treated with NatuWrap have a far superior appearance after they are packed and being displayed at retail.

While the shelf life on pears and other fruits is extended by many days, Beall said as a rule of thumb users should expect a doubling of post-harvest shelf life and 30 percent improvement in storage and transport quality.

He ran through a list of fresh products that have been treated with NatuWrap and pointed out the main advantages. For citrus, the product helps maintain their color; for cherries and grapes, NatuWrap keeps the stems greener for a much longer period, which extends their marketability on the grocer’s shelf; and for avocados, the process of the skin transitioning from green to black is doubled. He said they have also seen that the interior color of an avocado keeps its healthy green color for much longer after it has been cut.

Strachan understands why NatuWrap is being compared to waxes and other post-harvest coatings, but he doesn’t agree with the comparison to products that are baked on with heat and only used in a tiny subset of the produce industry.

“The simplicity of our organic product is that it can be added to water anywhere in the production process for any crops to extend storage, shipping and shelf life and reduce chemicals, plastics and food loss,” he said, putting NatuWrap in a category of its own.

In discussing the product, Strachan said it has four major benefits. Its physiological attributes do rise to the top of the list. He believes there is no direct comparison to any resin or wax. “NatuWrap acts as a virtual modified atmosphere,” he said. “Applied through water in many different ways, it’s a processing aid that dramatically increases shelf life by leaving residue on the fruit that acts as a passive gas and moisture barrier.”

Secondly, he said NatuWrap is a tremendous chemical delivery platform for whatever the packer wants to apply in the most efficient manner. Though it has been used mostly as a post-harvest product, Strachan said it has been commercially trialed during the growing cycles as a co-adjuvant to more efficiently deliver crop protection chemicals.

The third and fourth benefits are tied to its water solubility, which allows it to be applied virtually anywhere from the field to the fork. It also allows the consumer to wash off the residue under tap water.

Strachan said that while NatuWrap has been used commercially mostly on storage fruits, use on cherries and other fruits and vegetables has proven that it is advantageous across a broad list of categories.

For example, he expects the tomato, banana, melon and grape sectors to be prime targets as NatuWrap can offer both extended shelf life and a better way to apply other crop protection chemicals, including biologics both pre-harvest and during packing.

He also pointed to the role NatuWrap can play in the ongoing effort to reduce food waste. The extension of shelf life and delaying of decay is clearly a direct line path to greater utilization of any fresh product and a reduction in the amount of the harvest that ends up in landfills.

Strachan and Beall also discussed the cost of NatuWrap and said for the processor it is reasonably priced. Many customers are generating an immediate ROI by using less fungicides, less cleaning and less re-pack.

Bruce Parkins, operations manager for Washington Cherry Growers, based in Wenatchee, WA, recently told The Produce News, that the company used NatuWrap on its cherries this past season and was very pleased with the results. “We had a very good experience with the product this year,” he said, adding that his team has been trialing NatuWrap for the past three years. “It took us a while to figure out how and where we should add it to the packing process.”

Once they worked out that piece of the puzzle, they went in full bore in 2024. “It basically extended the shelf life of our cherries six to eight days and longer,” Parkins revealed. “The stems stayed greener longer and the fruit looked very good compared to product that had only gone through a chlorine bath.”

He noted that the packer experimented with different rates of application and discovered they were able to get excellent results with a very low level of application. They experimented with levels ranging from 0.5 ppm to 3 ppm and settled on a solution of 0.5 to 1 ppm. “At that level we still got excellent results with no detectable residue on the fruit.”

Parkins called the cost “very reasonable” and said reducing rejections at the receiver end is a big win.

A true measure of the efficacy of NatuWrap for Washington Cherry Growers, and their parent company Blue Bird Inc., is their plans for the use of the product for the 2024-25 crop season.

Parkins said they did trial NatuWrap on apples last season and will use it this year. He said trialing on pears is ongoing. He added that it will also be used on conventional and organic cherries in 2024.

Parkins also noted that word does travel fast and a few of his colleagues running other fruit packing facilities in the area did come and observe the cherry packing operation last year to figure out how they could incorporate NatuWrap in their own operations.

Tim Linden

Tim Linden

About Tim Linden  |  email

Tim Linden grew up in a produce family as both his father and grandfather spent their business careers on the wholesale terminal markets in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Tim graduated from San Diego State University in 1974 with a degree in journalism. Shortly thereafter he began his career at The Packer where he stayed for eight years, leaving in 1983 to join Western Growers as editor of its monthly magazine. In 1986, Tim launched Champ Publishing as an agricultural publishing specialty company.

Today he is a contract publisher for several trade associations and writes extensively on all aspects of the produce business. He began writing for The Produce News in 1997, and currently wears the title of Editor at Large.

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