| Case Study Acronym: | DIRECT |
| Long Title of the Case Study: | Real-Time Fresh Data: Data driven innovation and data reuse along the European fresh produce chain from farm to fork |
| Case Study Main Contact: |
Euro Pool System: |
| Countries involved and main place of the Case Study: |
Main Place: Germany Logistics Services of Euro Pool System are provided in 27 EU countries |
| Part of the Food System addressed: | The case includes the overall supply chain from farm to fork, also with circular aspects with respect to Returnable Transport Items (RTI). Specifically addressing (1) production, (2) logistics, (3) processing or manufacturing, (4) retail, (5) consumption, and (6) Waste management as well as (7) return logistics of the RTIs. |
Fruits and vegetables have the highest wastage rates of any food product (close to 50%). The short life-span/shelf life of fresh produce imposes high demand on properly matching supply and demand as well as on helping consumers pick produce according to their consumption patterns. In addition, dynamic environmental conditions are changing potential shelf-life and a simple visual inspection is limited when assessing the quality of produce and its remaining shelf life.
An early systemic innovation along the fruits and vegetables chain was the introduction of returnable trade items (RTIs) – foldable boxes that circulate in the food chain, being washed after usage and being continuously reused over many years. Euro Pool System is operating an open pool with over 200 Mio. boxes, outperforming cardboard and wooden boxes in terms of sustainability (e.g. resource usage vs. usage cycles, ability to recycle box material, CO2 footprint by transporting empty boxes in foldable state), while properly fulfilling the demands in accordance to HACCP. Therefore, representing a sustainable reusable and recyclable primary packaging, avoiding one-way packaging types by 100%.
RTIs have been bridging the gap between producers and consumers however data and information exchanges challenges still exist.
EPS, ATB and additional partners have been working on smart boxes which create digital twins and suggest the possibility of collecting, aggregating and analyzing huge amounts of data.
The Case Study will explore how to facilitate the enhancement of the data space so that food system stakeholders could properly use, reuse and redistribute data in a safe, fair, cost effective way.
The motivation of the Case Study is to better understand the barriers, opportunities, regulatory conditions in different EU settings that will facilitate data exchange and improve RTI based systems.
The key expected outcomes are to use data to:
Contact: Christian Schmidt
email:
Contact: Harald Sundmaeker
email:
The case study will select main supply chains with specific countries of origin and countries to supply the fruit and vegetables. Examples can be Spain-Netherlands or Italy-Germany. The case study aims to involve specific farmer associations, wholesalers or also distribution centres of large retail to discuss infrastructural requirements and end-user needs for a data economy in the food system. Depending on the retailers’ expectations and potentials to provide data to consumers, it will be investigated when to ask related consumers groups about their needs and expectations with respect to a sustainable and climate aware fruit and vegetables chain.
The case includes the overall supply chain from farm to fork, also with circular aspects with respect to Returnable Transport Items (RTI). Farmers are using the RTIs during harvest, offering the potential for combining produce data with the transport unit that has a unique identification. Logistic service providers are realising transport, storage, aggregation and disaggregation of produce put in RTIs. Especially food processors or manufacturers could receive data about produce provenance and real time status, facilitating quality check and short term production planning. The retailers can use general and real-time data about the produce to be sold, facilitating sales campaigns as well as back-store management. Finally, waste management, might make use of additional information to optimise rerouting of produce according to food availability and remaining shelf-life. The return logistics can also learn from real time data, to optimise planning of cleaning the boxes and balancing of boxes in between the depots of Euro Pool System to avoid issues with availability of washed boxes specifically in high season.
Euro Pool System and ATB will make use of achievements realised in the project FriDa that is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The FriDa project implemented a data exchange platform that could be used as a basic building block for the exchange of data along the food chain.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
