A key question in the food industry today is how to operate more sustainably while still guaranteeing quality. The two don’t always go hand in hand, especially while cost remains a factor as well.
Alto’s Moisturelock Meat Tray is one product trying to appeal to both ends of the spectrum – improving the effectiveness of meat packaging while ticking crucial sustainability boxes at the same time. Importantly, using the Moisturelock can also help meat retain one of its most important qualities: juiciness.
You don’t need to be a food scientist, or even a chef, to know that this is one of the most vital elements in determining the quality of meat. But it’s true: according to food science, the tasty drippings provide one of the three key identifiers of an excellent cut, along with tenderness and flavour. It’s easy for meat to surrender some of that moisture quickly, though. In most packaging, meat will lose around 1-3% of its juices in ‘drip loss’, which is caught in soaker pads. In a bid to avoid this drip loss, the award winning new Moisturelock meat tray is designed to keep prime cuts juicier for longer.
Engineered to capture fluid via specially created dimples in its base, this tray removes the need for a soaker pad. Coupled with a 30mm depth and revolutionary angled rim, the Moisturelock protects the product and dramatically reduces leakage risk.
Meanwhile, its sustainable credentials come through an innovative build using 50% recycled polyethylene terephthalate, or rPET for short. That means the tray is made using recycled materials, and, in turn, is fully recyclable in Australia and New Zealand.
In using rPET, Alto has moved production of the Moisturelock towards a circular economy, with the plastic used coming originally from such items as drinks bottles and – pleasingly – meat trays. With most councils now able to collect and process meat trays in the kerbside recycling, it’s likely that these products will also end up being reconstituted into new items once used – perhaps even becoming Moisturelock Meat Trays once more.
If you want to see sustainability in action, you won’t find a juicier example than that.
