Packed leafy salad our solutions from field to store.

Lamb’s lettuce, baby leaves, leafy salad mix… pre-packed in a controlled atmosphere, this typical convenient consumer unit is very successful and growing fast in EU 28 for the past 15 years. Schoeller Allibert supplies the market leaders with two different Euro stack nest crates perfectly meeting product and company needs… Market focus: controlled atmosphere packed leafy salad, our solutions from field to store

Lamb‘s lettuce: The SN204301 stack nest container is ubiquitous for French producers with more than 300 000 crates in the field from October to May.

In the Nantes region , where 82% of the 42 000 tons of lamb’ lettuce are grown and processed, the SA stack nest ventilated crate is the industry standard harvesting and distribution container from field to washing, cleansing and automated packing of this fragile fresh product. Smooth sides and optimum ventilation protect and maintain quality of small leaves.

With less than a 5 kg unit load, secure stacking is essential as 2.5 m high stacked columns of crates must remain aligned and stable during transportation and storage. The unique interlocking system has proven its efficiency over the past eight years while 75 % nesting saves maximum space in storage during the low season. Strong construction and UV stabilizers allow storage outside in summer and during low temperatures in the winter high season.

Mixed leafy salad processing leader:

Green salads grow in southern Europe and northern Africa from October to April.

With more than 1500 salad growers under contract from all over Europe our customer was taking delivery of a wide variety of harvesting and logistics crates at his packing / processing sites. An efficient automated process was not possible without the standardization of these crates.

The average mileage from field to processing site is 1500 km, so that maximum nesting is required to save valuable space on return transport. Our specially developed crate ref 8170722 reaches 80% nesting for the supply of empty crates to growers, this means lots of trucks and fuel saved each year.

The SA crates have also enabled the customer to speed packing & processing operations with a standard crate. Internal smooth walls for quality preservation and maximized ventilation for freshness of whole salads provide additional benefits to the customer.

Now more than 350 000 boxes are travelling throughout Europe from growers to 12 processing / packing sites with many different green salads inside, including lettuce and baby leaves, to be carefully transported, stored , washed , packed in bags under controlled atmosphere and sent to retail shops in folding trays.