Yoav Levy shares how Evigence’s technology can measure and manage the freshness of foods across the entire supply chain
Originally, I was an investment banker and about 20 years ago, I decided I wanted to become an entrepreneur, to create something. I started a few companies; I sold one, I closed another, and as an entrepreneur, I spotted a gap in the market and had an idea for using technology to fill it. I was convinced that a better solution could be conceived to give a more accurate indication of refrigerated products’ shelf life than the existing date code method,” begins Yoav Levy, Co-founder and CEO of Evigence.
“So, our evolution started from developing sensors. Initially, we focused on healthcare but transitioned to monitoring and managing fresh foods after licensing our technology for vaccines in 2016. We realized that our customers want to not only physically see a product and its level of freshness, but also to be able to document data and use it in large-scale systems.
“We are redefining how to measure freshness. We all know intuitively what fresh is but it’s something that the system doesn’t know how to quantify. If we don’t know how to quantify it, we don’t know how to measure it, so the customer or consumer needs to make a subjective call. So, what we do is combine sensors with data analytics that monitor food freshness. Our solution is different to other tools out there, as we’re able to go right down to case and even to item level,” he shares.
Real remaining shelf life
Evigence’s Freshness Management Platform combines sensors with data analytics to monitor food’s freshness in real time, at the item level, all the way from production to consumption, and provides unparalleled insights that help optimize freshness in supply chains, inventory and even in consumers’ homes. Fresh food starts to spoil as it is exposed to time and temperature. Just one degree of temperature change can add or subtract ten percent of food’s remaining fresh life. Existing date codes do not account for temperature variations in food’s journey from farm to fork. Consequently, these unmeasured temperature fluctuations can mean that the actual remaining life of fresh foods is often double or half of what is indicated by the date code. This discrepancy can lead to the waste of perfectly good food, or the consumption of unsafe food.
“This is a problem in the industry right now and it leads to massive food waste. When you consider perishable goods, temperature is a major factor that affects the real remaining shelf life of the product. If you were to take milk out of the refrigerator and leave it for several hours, for example, it will diminish the shelf life of that product dramatically, and the date code doesn’t take that into account. While monitoring occurs all the time, it is often fragmented. Temperature, for example, can be inconsistent, even within a single pallet, with variants of as much as 30-to-50 percent on remaining shelf life from product to product,” Yoav explains.
Top-tier freshness detection
Managing fresh foods is difficult, as small differences in time and temperature exposure for each unit throughout the cold chain lead to outsized impact on freshness and remaining shelf life. The lack of visibility into food’s actual remaining freshness creates challenges for D2C food brands and online grocers. Evigence’s solutions enable customers to manage food’s freshness as it travels from the point of production to the point of sale. As such, customers can respond in real time to breaks in the cold chain and re-route shipments based on remaining freshness. They can identify patterns by geography, carrier or seasonality to avoid compromised freshness in the future and reduce load rejections on arrival or take them down to the case or retail unit level.
“A small change in temperature creates a big swing in a product’s remaining shelf life. The current date code system is usually conservative to make allowances for how products are stored and kept and to avoid complaints. What our sensors, with embedded QR code scanning, enable customers to do is confidently ensure top-tier freshness detection and quality control. Customers can gain actionable insights on produce freshness, supply optimization, and inventory management to reduce waste and boost customer satisfaction. Our systems can detail the actual condition of a product, enabling retailers to know when not to sell it or not to
accept it from the vendor, for example,” he details.
The chemistry inside the FreshSense™ sensor mimics the biological reaction that happens in food as it deteriorates and changes color to reflect a change in quality. The multi-mode scanning capabilities, including augmented reality (AR) mobile scanning and automatic production-line vision, means that scanned sensor data can be immediately uploaded to the Evigence cloud for analysis and visualization that generates in-depth dashboards powered by AI.
“The current date code system is suboptimized and we can’t continue to work with a system in which so much good food is thrown away. Around the world and in the US, even between states, the policies and practises around date codes differ quite widely,” Yoav elaborates. “Getting people on board with our technology is a gradual process of building trust with retailers and customers. While most of our work is B2B, we will be releasing some technology soon that is B2C focused. This will be the first exposure of this technology, and it will be in the hands of consumers. The early adopters will create more pull for this product to be at an at item level for the consumer. Our system provides transparency. When you know where a product is in its shelf life, it’s possible to divert it to ensure consumption sooner. Customers can detect where there are systematic temperature issues and rectify them accordingly to optimize shelf life and again, reduce waste.
Creating positive change
Looking to the future, Yoav shares his excitement for Evigence’s upcoming projects and plans. “We’re introducing a new management system for our B2B customers and will be making some announcements with customers that we think will have considerable influence on the industry. Equally exciting, on the B2C side, there will be announcements in the next month or two regarding a product that will be in many stores in the US. So, we’re going to start there, by spreading awareness and hopefully, this will trickle down to other markets. People will be aware of the application and hopefully, will want it on other products that they’re buying in the store. When we select partners to work with, we look for visionaries who will champion our technology and who want to create positive change within their organizations.”