Wouldn’t you like to know the quality of your produce as it travels through your supply chain – while the produce is still in transport? Be able to check the actual temperature and relative humidity of produce on each pallet, including the exact position of the pallet on the truck – from the convenience of your desktop?

Sound like science fiction? "Definitely not" says Mr. Amnon Sandman, Commercial Manager of StePac Ltd., developers of the new Xsense® Perishables Quality Monitoring System. "With our system, shippers are able to follow, in real time, the condition of their produce in every single pallet; not just the conditions in the transport vessel, or of one pallet in the container. This information, which is critical to delivering top quality produce to market, is registered and made available to the shipper/packer/receiver/owner even before the produce reaches its destination. StePac Ltd., which has over 15 years of experience helping suppliers deliver quality produce to markets with its Xtend® line of modified atmosphere/modified humidity packaging, saw a market need for user-friendly produce quality monitoring. Standard dataloggers provide insight about the temperature in the transport vessel and must be manually retrieved and data downloaded at transport destination. They do not present a true picture of the quality of the produce in the cartons nor is monitored data available in real time. In addition, Xsense® sensors begin transmitting temperature and relative humidity data as soon as they are placed in produce cartons – during pre-shipment cooling and storage, during transport, at distribution centers and at retail points of sale.

The advantages are obvious for every participant in the supply chain, beginning with the packer. MTEX packing facilities in Afula, Israel, one of the country’s leading exporters offresh produce, is using the Xsense® system for monitoring the quality of its avocados.

During sorting and packing, the sensors are placed in a carton in the center of the pallet.

From that moment, the packinghouse manager is able to monitor and track the pallet.

When the container is loaded the quality manager can quickly check the temperature and RH of produce in every single pallet from his desktop.

"We are already saving money and, most importantly, we are 100% sure of the arrival condition of our avocados," says Oron Ziv, Managing Director of MTEX Holland. "It is a perfect system for complete temperature traceability. We know exactly which pallet to use first and when there is a major temperature breach, we can act even before the container arrives."

Alara Turkey (a part of UNIVEG Group) is using the Xsense® system for monitoring the quality of their cherries as they make their way to supermarkets in the UK. "With up to €100,000 value in one container it is extremely important to know the exact situation and to act quickly when conditions are not what they should be," says a spokesperson for the

Turkish company."One of the most important things we learned since using this system was that there are huge temperature differences between each pallet and that each truck has its own specific temperature profile. Now that we know this, we can load produce and adjust air conditioning accordingly." Alara is using this information in their negotiations with their transporters and to upgrade their transport chain.

Agrexco, Israel’s foremost agricultural exporter, has taken Xsense® one step further and has begun assimilating the system at all levels of theorganization – from packing houses in Israel to storage facilities throughout the world. Eli

Feingold of Agrexco quickly recognized the potential of the system and with the assistance of Sigalit Berenzon saw to it that Agrexco was an early adopter of the Xsense® system. ◊