The importance of a proper sealant around the crown of bananas needs more attention, with tens of millions of boxes of this popular fruit exported around the world, says Luis Monge, Director of Transastra. S.A. based in Peru. They are a manufacturer and supplier of ParaSeal® the paraffin film that is wrapped around the crown of bananas to protect, seal and keep it hydrated, during and after transit.
Banana crowns well protected with ParaSeal®
The company is about to celebrate its first decade in the market. During this time, although it reached some success, they had to make adjustments, especially over the last 2-3 years with so many different things happening around the world says Monge.
“Some adjustments include major changes to our business model. We had to deal with Covid restrictions, the shipping container crisis, supply chain disruptions, and had to make many decisions in a short period of time to maintain our markets and supply our products to our customers. We had to open a distribution center in Latin America, to supply ourselves with enough stock to anticipate as much as possible what we imagined would be the requirements of our customers,” explains Monge.
Transastra supplies 85% of the market demand in South, Central and North America, as well as in the banana producing and exporting countries of the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia with its ParaSeal for banana crowns. In 2022 alone, more than 45 million boxes of bananas were packed using their product to protect the crowns against post-harvest fungus without the need to use synthetic fungicides.
Banana crowns well protected with ParaSeal®
“Our competition was unable to ship the product for more than six months at least and therefore our factory operated 24/7 from August 2022 to March 2023 to fill the huge void left by this shortage in the market. It was a a titanic work by our production people, who we considered heroes as they were able to satisfy that giant wave of demand for our products. #WeSpeakBananas was born as the motto of our approach to serving banana farmers, from the perspective of banana growers and exporters as we did that for for many years ourselves. We are very successful with our approach to understanding our customers' needs speaking bananas!."
While visiting banana producers in Colima, Mexico last November Monge says he noticed something worrying. “I came across a roll of material from someone else that seemed to me to be of very poor quality. A material with an old appearance, poorly extruded or made with inferior quality raw materials. I thought it was very strange and I thought it was probably something fortuitous. But, for weeks we have not stopped receiving market reports, as well as comments from quality control technicians in the industry, which show us how the quality of an alternative product has deteriorated. Now it has become a systematic problem, because the problem can be found in fruit from Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador in stores that also sell organic bananas, which can be compared one by one with those packed with our ParaSeal, that looks fresher and in much better condition,” states Monge.
Banana crowns well protected with ParaSeal®
Maintaining consistent quality
“Since we were born as a company and launched our ParaSeal for bananas and Seal-R-Film® for laboratories, our two main focuses have been service and quality. We have a technical support team that is willing to address any questions that may arise. Our ParaSeal has a barcode for tracking back to the manufacturing date, quality inspections, purchasing order, etc. Also it is officially approved for use on organic products, such as bananas. The next time you have to choose, you will know who speaks your language,” concludes Monge.
For more information:
Luis Monge
Transastra
Tel: +51 963684931
Email: luis.monge@transastra.net
Website: www.paraseal.com