United Fresh Honors Best New Products

New product award winners in five categories were chosen among more than 25 fresh fruit and vegetable innovations that competed for best of show honors during the recent United Fresh Produce Association’s annual convention and expo in Dallas.

The 2012 new product award winners include:

Best New Packaging Product: Naturipe LLC, EarthCycle Packaging for Organic Berries
Best New Food Safety Solution: DeltaTRAK, FlashCheck Real-time Bacterial Enzyme Detection Kit
Best New Packing/Processing Equipment: Bosch Packaging Technology, Bosch Pack 301 IN Inverted Horizontal Flow Wrapper
Best New Fruit Product: Ready Pac Foods, Fresh Fruit Parfaits
Best New Vegetable Product: Mastronardi Produce, Delano

“These winning innovations are the forerunners in the effort to bring new approaches, ideas and processes to the fresh fruit and vegetable industry,” said John Toner, United’s VP of convention & industry relations.

“From its very beginnings, the United show has been the undisputed home of innovation for the produce industry, and these awards continue to showcase the best and brightest minds in the produce business. We’re proud to congratulate the 27 finalists in this year’s competition.”

The finalists in each category were on display for the two days of the United Fresh 2012 trade show, and the winners were selected from votes cast by United, FMI and AMI show attendees.

 “We are very proud of the new Ready Pac fresh fruit parfaits, and we are honored to have received the Best New Fruit Product award at United Fresh,” said Tristan Simpson, director of marketing at Ready Pac. “By merchandising Ready Pac fresh fruit parfaits, supermarkets offer a perfect pantry-load breakfast and light meal solution, and have an opportunity to reclaim sales lost due to customer attrition to other trade channels.”