Turn every fruit label into freshness technology

FreshHold™ is a 100% home-compostable fruit label that quietly absorbs and inhibits ethylene – helping you reduce shrink, protect quality and be ready for the 2028 compostable-label regulations.

  • Cut waste and shrink by slowing ripening at the individual-fruit level

  • Meet incoming 2028 bans on non-compostable stickers with a natural, home-compostable label

  • Keep your existing labelling lines – FreshHold™ runs on standard in-line equipment.

  • All-natural, food-safe formulation. Nothing on the edible surface.

The fruit is perfect. The system is leaking value.

You put a full year of work into every crop – pruning, thinning, picking, cooling, packing, shipping. Yet a significant percentage of fruit is still lost between orchard and consumer because it ripens too fast, softens in storage, or arrives below spec.

At the same time, label regulations are shifting. By 2028, non-compostable plastic fruit stickers will be banned, and brand owners will be required to move to home-compostable labels.

That means two things are now non-negotiable:

  • You must change your labels to meet compostability rules

  • You must reduce shrink to protect margins and grower returns

FreshHold™ is designed to do both – without adding complexity to your operations.

FreshHold™ is a new type of fruit label. On the outside, it does everything a normal label does – branding, PLU, traceability, country of origin.

Inside, it is doing something completely different: our all-natural, food-safe compound is working on ethylene, the hormone that drives ripening and spoilage.

Each FreshHold™ label is:

  • 100% home-compostable – designed to meet home-compostability standards, so consumers can throw it in their home compost with the skins and peels

  • Ethylene-active – formulated to both absorb and inhibit ethylene at the individual-fruit level

  • All-natural and food-safe – no coatings on the edible surface, no synthetic waxes or invisible films

  • Built into your existing label – no extra sachets, pads, or additional components to manage

So instead of simply identifying your fruit, your labels now help protect it.

Works with your lines. Not against them.

FreshHold™ is designed so packhouses and label converters can adopt it with minimal disruption.

  • Drop-in label format
    FreshHold™ labels are supplied on standard rolls and formats suitable for in-line labellers. For most operations, adoption looks like a label swap – not a new project.

  • No new capital equipment
    Our goal is to work with the labelling systems you already lease or own. That means no new machines on the floor, no extra steps, and no special handling.

  • Aligns with your compliance requirements
    Labels are being developed to meet FSANZ/MPI food-contact and international home-compostable standards, with export markets in mind.

  • Flexible use cases

    • Integrated brand owners and packhouses: in-line during grading and packing

    • Retailers: applied in-store when restocking if needed

    • Independent growers: simple hand-labelling after harvest

If you are already applying fruit labels, FreshHold™ is designed to slot into that exact step – but with more value in every sticker.

What FreshHold™ delivers for each part of your value chain

The same label step. More days of saleable fruit.

For integrated brand owners and packhouses

  • Fewer quality claims and rejections at destination

  • Improved firmness and shelf life across long cool-storage and shipping windows

  • Reduced downgrade and discounting, especially late in the season

  • Compliance with home-compostable label rules ahead of 2028

For retailers

  • Lower shrink on shelf – fewer soft or spoiled fruit in displays

  • More consistent quality for consumers over the full week

  • Simple sustainability story: “labels and skins can go in home compost”

  • No new processes in-store if labels arrive pre-applied from the packhouse

For growers

  • More Class 1 fruit reaching premium markets

  • Better returns on the same block of fruit

  • Protection against small ethylene and handling issues that otherwise erode value

For consumers

  • Fruit that stays at “ready to eat” for longer at home

  • Less disappointment when cutting into avocados, kiwifruit, apples and other climacteric fruit

  • Easy disposal – label and peel into home compost, not landfill

Independent validation and industry-led pilots

FreshHold™ is being developed with industry and science partners to ensure it performs under real commercial conditions – not just in the lab.

  • Independent lab work
    Controlled trials with respected postharvest scientists are designed to measure firmness, colour, internal quality, ethylene, and shelf life uplift for key crops such as kiwifruit, apples, and avocados.

  • Commercial pilot trials
    Early pilot partners are preparing to run FreshHold™ at scale through commercial packing lines, storage, export and retail conditions – measuring shrink reduction and added sale days.

We are now locking in our next group of pilot and first-adopter partners. This hidden page is for brand owners, packhouses and retailers who want to be at the front of that queue.

Reserve your place as an early FreshHold™ partner

We are inviting a small number of integrated brand owners, packhouses, and retailers to participate in trials and secure preferential access to FreshHold™ labels as we scale.

If you see a fit for your crops and markets, let us know what success would need to look like for you – and what level of commitment you’d be prepared to make if FreshHold™ meets those thresholds.

We use this information to prioritise pilot partners, plan manufacturing capacity, and shape our roadmap.

By submitting this form, you are not entering into a binding contract. Any LOIs or MOUs would be developed together and signed separately in writing.