Smart Choice
What started as a question thrown around over dinner and a bottle of wine soon shot to fame when it was named one of TIME magazine's 30 greatest inventions of 2004. That question was: "How can you make a fruit label do more?" Hazel Penfold puts that same question to the designers of the intelligent fruit label now named ripeSense™.
'Ripesense' is a sensor which changes colour to indicate the ripeness of specific fruit. First used commercially on a package of pears, the ripeSense label changes colour, from red when the pears are "crisp", to orange when they are "firm" and finally to yellow, which indicates the fruit is "juicy".
The intelligent label is a collaborative effort between HortResearch – a crown research institute specialising in fruit science – and Jenkins Group – a supplier of adhesive labels and flexible packaging, and now the parent company of ripeSense.
Cameron McInness, who has been involved with the project since its commercialisation and is now General Manager of ripeSense, describes how the organisations came together. "It started over a dinner, with a few bottles of wine," he says. "It was people from Jenkins Group, a company called Sinclair International out of the United Kingdom and the then Chairman of HortResearch, a gentleman called Roger Davies.
"They were sitting around a table discussing how you could make a fruit label do more. At that stage Roger Davies says: 'you should come and talk to some of our scientists, they're playing round with melons at the moment'."
The first of those scientists – Ron Henzell – returned from an American conference on the consumption of pears with the idea implanted in his mind. With assistance from Keith Sharrock, the pair quickly demonstrated how a maturity indicator could work.
This case study is reproduced with permission from e.nz magazine. Subscriptions to e.nz are discounted for schools and TENZ members.
