SUNT Food & The Banana Factory

Long description

Of the 100 billion tons of bananas produced each year, 50 billion kilos are wasted throughout the entire chain, making bananas one of the biggest sources of food waste. The current outdated food chains normalized the massive amounts of waste and made it nearly impossible for companies to upcycle the waste streams that occur around imported produce. Sunt is the first to rescue rejected bananas. We’re building the world’s first Banana Factory which will enable us to upcycle these bananas into innovative food products.

Strict (customs) regulations, inflexible handling processes, and outdated thinking resulted in millions of bananas marked as waste. In the Benelux ports, 20 million kilos of bananas are destroyed because their shape, size, or color doesn’t match the standards.

Sunt found a sustainable and cost-reducing solution for this problem. Rather than the expensive and environmentally unfriendly method of destroying bananas in incinerators, we increase their value by turning bananas into a high-quality no-waste banana puree. This puree is used for Sunt’s innovative and healthy consumer food products destined for retail. But it’s also the key to a more sustainable European banana puree market with less transportation and locally sourced bananas.

The cost reduction we generate for importers will be pushed back to the beginning of the banana chain. So even the farmers will benefit from our solution. That’s how we’re able to eliminate banana waste and get that rejected banana back on the retail shelves after all. As a banana bread for example. Take that, food industry!

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