Fruits can now reach farther markets as a leading shipping company has introduced StarCare, a new generation of Controlled Atmosphere (CA) containers which would preserve the fruits from ripening and decaying in their long transportation period. Bananas, the fourth most widely consumed food of humans after rice, wheat and corn, will largely benefit from the latest transportation invention, and the resultant longer shelf life would likely help them to take larger share of the global food market.
Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company that has integrated these containers to its fleet, stated in its official website, the StarCare offers shippers and consignees the efficiencies and flexibility of containerised transport – even enabling one to ship small quantities of bananas to remote markets. The shipping firm claims the special design and advanced membrane technology of the CA containers allow the fruits to stay fresh for up to 45 days maintaining outstanding product quality.
The new containers regulate temperature, humidity levels and the mixture of oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen to keep the products fresh all the way to the consumers of any distant market. This transportation medium is even claimed to do away with the expensive Banavac packaging process thus saving time and money to the exporters.
Through the StarCare shipping process which allows small volumes to be freighted, even Ecuador is in a position to explore the distant markets of the Middle East, Japan, China, Russia and New Zealand. The Costa Rican exporters now have access to the valuable markets in Russia and the East Coast of South America. Similarly, the banana producers in the Philippines are now able to export their produce to the Middle East, while the African exporters can now ship to the Mediterranean Sea and to the Northern Europe.
The level playing field created by this new freighting system is expected to help banana exporters across the world to increase profitability and cut transit losses. The breaking down of barriers through extended market reach is likely to usher in a new wave of competition in the international food market, perhaps, even tinker with the consumers’ dietary habits.