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A world first:
An OK compost HOME certified fruit label   

  By Duncan Jones, Senior Marketing Manager

 
We are delighted to announce that our Sinclair EcoLabel HOME™ fruit label is independently certified as 'OK compost HOME by TÜV Austria.

The Sinclair EcoLabel HOME fruit label is a food-safe, bio-based and plastic-free construction. The complete construction (not just one individual component) is certified, which means the fruit label composts down into soil-enriching matter including biodegrading within 365 days.

The TÜV Austria ‘OK compost HOME’ certification is an internationally recognized verification process. Successfully achieving certification demonstrates that Sinclair EcoLabel HOME meets stringent compost testing standards, and will break down in a home compost environment without any negative environmental impact. The ‘OK compost HOME’ certificate provides a trust mark, for customers, governments, and consumers, that Sinclair EcoLabel HOME is an environmentally friendly product.

 

What are the next steps for Sinclair and the industry?
 

We have moved with pace to quickly develop the Sinclair EcoLabel HOME for French legislation commencing 1st January 2022, but this is only the first step. We continue to field trial on different fruit varieties to evaluate performance. It is challenging to apply fruit labels at high speed in packinghouses and supply chain environments. Adhesion performance depends on fruit skin, humidity and temperature, the packing line configuration and other supply chain conditions. Sinclair EcoLabel - HOME is more sensitive in these conditions due to the nature of the materials and construction required for home composting.

"During our 39 years as a market leader, our goal is always to improve our products in terms of performance. With sustainability as our core focus, we have successfully reduced our business impact on the environment and developed environmentally friendly fruit labels. Even with our success in developing Sinclair EcoLabel HOME™, we see room to improve performance. This is due to the characteristics of the current label construction and the challenges of labeling certain fruits in the packinghouse environment. Our extensive experience and success in delivering innovative fruit labeling solutions mean that developing a new label construction and improving labeling performance is not a unique undertaking. We are confident that with more time and the development of improved home compostable materials we will continue our track record of continuous product improvement."
Wil Murray, Senior Director of Operations


A further challenge is the scarcity of suitable materials for home compostable label development. We have development streams to identify or construct the materials we need, but the key ingredient required is time, time for material development, time for compost standard testing and time for product testing.

So, as new materials become available, we will continue development to provide a home compostable fruit label with performance closer to our current fruit labels. We remain confident in our approach; we have a proven history in developing sustainable, food-safe fruit labels and meeting customer and consumer requirements.

 

Now though, we are delighted to be able to offer two independently certified compostable fruit labeling solutions, Sinclair EcoLabel® – Industrial and Sinclair EcoLabel HOME™.

 

 

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