Hy-Vee Tests Fresh Food Traceability with Zest Labs
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Zest Labs, a subsidiary of Ecoark Holdings, Inc. (“Ecoark”) (OTCQX: ZEST), today announced that it is working with Hy-Vee, Inc., the employee-owned supermarket chain that operates more than 245 retail stores across eight Midwestern states. Hy-Vee is conducting a trial of the company’s Zest Fresh solution to help automate farm-to-fork traceability of fresh produce coming to Hy-Vee stores.
Hy-Vee is committed to providing a vast assortment of high-quality natural, organic and locally sourced products and empowers consumers to understand where their food is sourced.
Hy-Vee is testing Zest Fresh, the only freshness management solution that leverages the Internet of Things (IoT) to autonomously track and report in real time the freshness of products from harvest to the retail store, in its work with a premium supplier of seedless Holiday grapes, a prized, premium product that is exported all around the world. Leveraging the industry’s first dynamic freshness metric – the ZIPR Code – Zest Fresh can provide Hy-Vee with traceability data and continuous real-time visibility of the remaining freshness capacity of the grapes.
“We are excited to work with Zest Labs to determine how Zest Fresh can help both monitor and improve freshness, while providing complete traceability through the cold supply chain,” said John Griesenbrock, Hy-Vee’s vice president, produce/Health Markets. “With traceability support, we will become even more invested in bringing the freshest and highest-quality produce to our customers.”
Zest Labs’ unique combination of secure traceability and its ZIPR Code freshness metric provides real-time data about a product’s condition and freshness capacity. As such, Zest Labs has proven to reduce waste from spoilage by more than 50 percent for grocers.
“Hy-Vee has always put high quality and consumer confidence at the forefront of everything they do, which makes them an ideal partner for us,” said Peter Mehring, CEO of Zest Labs. “By working closely with growers, we’re all creating true transparency throughout the entire cold chain and ensuring only the freshest products arrive at their stores with a complete record of the product through every step in the cold chain.”
About Hy-Vee, Inc.
Hy-Vee, Inc. is an employee-owned corporation operating more than 245 retail stores across eight Midwestern states with sales of $10 billion annually. The supermarket chain is synonymous with quality, variety, convenience, healthy lifestyles, culinary expertise and superior customer service. Hy-Vee ranks in the Top 10 Most Trusted Brands and has been named one of America’s Top 5 favorite grocery stores. The company’s 85,000 employees provide “A Helpful Smile in Every Aisle” to customers every day. For additional information, visit www.hy-vee.com.
About Zest Labs
Zest Labs, a subsidiary of Ecoark Holdings, Inc., provides a growing suite of freshness management solutions that substantially improve quality consistency and drive sustainability for a wide range of clients. Zest Labs provides solutions to modernize the existing food distribution and delivery system by significantly increasing efficiency through continuous condition monitoring and real-time prescriptive analytics.
About Ecoark Holdings Inc.
Founded in 2011, Ecoark is an AgTech company modernizing the post-harvest fresh food supply chain for a wide range of organizations including growers, distributors and retailers. The company’s Zest Fresh solution, a breakthrough approach to quality management of post-harvest fresh food, is specifically designed to help substantially reduce the $161 billion amount of food loss the U.S. experiences each year. Through item-level monitoring and real-time predictive analytics, Zest Fresh enables customers to improve the freshness and quality of produce, realize substantial cost savings and reduce food waste.
Forward Looking Statements
This release contains forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements concerning the business and possible or assumed future results of operations of Zest Labs; and statements concerning the ability of Zest Labs’ technology to improve delivered quality consistency, significantly reduce perishable food waste, drive sustainability, and increase efficiency in the industry. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements for many reasons including: access to growth capital on favorable terms; adverse economic changes affecting markets we serve; competition in our markets and industry segments; our timing and the profitability of entering new markets; greater than expected costs, customer acceptance of our products or difficulties related to our integration of the businesses we may acquire; and other risks and uncertainties as may be detailed from time to time in our public announcements and SEC filings. Although we believe the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, they relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made, and our future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements may not meet these expectations. We do not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this document to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in our expectations, except as required by law.
