Fruit and produce have short shelf lives that are often complicated by the supply chain process. Food needs to be harvested, packaged, shipped and sold all before it spoils. To help with the supply chain process of fruits and produce, Seattle-based Strella developed a sensor that monitors fruit ripeness and recently secured new funding.
On Tuesday, Strella announced that it closed an oversubscribed Series A funding round that reeled in $8 million for its sensors that are meant to reduce food waste. The round was led by Millennium New Horizons and included participation from angel investor Mark Cuban.
Strella’s biosensors can monitor the ripeness and maturity of fruit from the moment it’s picked to when it reaches grocery stores. It does so by monitoring gases that are released by fruits as they begin to ripen. The gases provide an early sign that the fruit is beginning to mature.
“Suppliers, retailers and importers are doing their best to bring high-quality, healthy produce to consumers in the most efficient way possible. However, unlike manufactured foods, there is no accurate expiration date for produce, which makes optimizing inventory a challenge for the industry across the entire supply chain,” Katherine Sizov, CEO and co-founder of Strella, said in a statement.
With the data Strella gathers, the startup is able to keep track of produce as it is transported to stores. Strella also helps companies not contribute to produce waste.
According to the company, its sensors have been adopted by the apple industry and have monitored over 2.1 billion pieces of fruit. With the new funding, Strella will work to roll out its sensors on a national scale and work on developments for other food commodities.
“More and more retailers are making waste reduction their top priority, with over a dozen of the world’s largest grocers looking to halve food waste by 2030,” Ray Cheng, a partner at Millennium, said in a statement. “By combining molecular biology with data science, Strella is uniquely positioned to solve food waste challenges at scale, as it has already demonstrated [it] with its early customers.”
