Parkside and the New Forest Fruit Company have developed a home compostable flexible packaging solution for its new range of ‘plant to packet’ sustainable dried strawberries.

The packs are made with Parkside’s patented triplex Park2Nature material, which is TÜV certified as home compostable within 26 weeks in normal composting conditions and 12 weeks in an industrial composting facility. The products are referred to as ‘plant to packet’ as they are grown, processed, and packed entirely on the New Forest Fruit Company’s farm in New Forest, Hampshire, ensuring the carbon footprint of each product is kept to an absolute minimum.

“Sustainable packaging is fundamental to our business, so we were thrilled to work with a brand whose ethos is so similar to our own,” said Staci Bye, business unit manager at Parkside. “This partnership with New Forest Fruit Company saw us share a goal to develop a high-quality product packed as sustainably as possible – and that synergy shows in the final result.

“It is particularly rewarding as these products represent a first for the UK snack market – the result of a novel combination of pulse drying and freeze-drying. Despite the challenge of packing a first-to-market product, our innovation team worked in close collaboration with the customer to deliver excellent results once again.”

The compostable packs were developed with the sustainable goals of the brand in mind. The fruit snacks use a combination of pulse drying and freeze drying to desiccate the fruit pieces while retaining their original shape, flavors, and nutrients. This allows New Forest Fruit to improve crop utilization by processing fruits that are too large, small, or misshapen to meet retailers’ specifications.

Sandy Booth, owner of New Forest Fruit Company, said that they were delighted with the new packaging for the company’s range of snacking strawberries. “It was important to us that we found a company that could provide the compostable flexible packaging that had not only been tested and accredited but could also be designed to meet the specific needs of our strawberries,” said Booth. “As well as fully breaking down in a range of conditions and timeframes in either home or industrial composters, Parkside’s solution also delivers a pack that conveys the freshness and quality of our product to consumers.”

The Park2Nature range of packaging from Parkside uses a laminate material made using PEFC-accredited plant-based resources and is GMO and PLA-free.