Tag: PLU stickers

With increasing consumption of fresh produce as its top priority, on November 15, International Fresh Produce Association CEO Cathy Burns and VP of Innovation, Vonnie Estes, attended a roundtable meeting focused on U.S. and Canadian consumer food affordability with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

River Valley Fruit, a leading apple, cherry and pear grower, packer and shipper is thrilled to announce the introduction of the Audra Rose cherry bag, complemented by its newly assigned PLU number, 3550.

West Pak Avocado, a leading global distributor of premium avocados, is proud to announce a new price look-up (PLU) sticker as part of an industry initiative through Avocados From Mexico (AFM).

Nations of the European Union, led by France, are starting to mandate that PLU labels on fruits and vegetables must be “home compostable.” Those little plastic labels that we use in this country (apart from having the annoying quality of sticking to your kitchen counter once you take them off) are not compostable. 

It’s reasonable to predict that the plastic PLU label, with its almost supernatural ability to find and stick to kitchen countertops after it has been removed from the fruit, will someday be a thing of the past.

Produce Marketing Association has announced a breadth of efforts to advance innovation and industry involvement with regulators on PLU stickers.

I will make a confession: I hate PLU labels. When I take them off apples, for example, unless I immediately throw them in the trash, they get stuck to the kitchen counter and have to be peeled off a second time.

The pandemic has significantly changed the grocery landscape, and for retailers to make sense of it all and make proper forecasts, they need accurate data.

The Produce Marketing Association recommends fresh produce shippers phase out generic UPCs and switch to the GS1 DataBar, which offers company specific coding.

To what end will we go to extend shelf life?