In Focus: Four Questions With Frank Kelsey
April 21, 2012 
1. What role can packaging play in enticing a purchase from consumers?
Kelsey: The best way to add value for the farmer/packer is to ensure their product has a consistent presentation built on quality that is easily recognized in the marketplace. Packaging needs to complement the product and help it stand out. The farmer wins when people search for his label at the store level. At Highland Packaging Solutions, we have graphic artists that can help the grower/packer bring their unique ideas to reality and get a distinct label into the market. As a manufacturer of both labels and clamshells, we are able to turn packaging ideas into reality.
2. How much do postharvest treatments factor into the desirability of a produce item?
Kelsey: All the hard work the grower puts into his crop up to the time of harvest yields a product at peak quality. Postharvest handling, packaging, and packinghouse treatments should be designed around maintaining that premium quality throughout the marketing process. It’s like when your kids move away and start their own family. You did the best you could to raise them right, and you hope they will be treated well as they make their way through life. The farmer entrusts those packing and marketing his crop to do their best by him and his produce as it moves along its journey to the consumer.
3. How important is it that growers begin to ensure package labeling can allow for easy traceability?
Kelsey: With specific buyer requirements and the Produce Traceability Initiative, it will be increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to market and sell produce without some sort of product traceback in place. It is here to stay.
4. We hear a lot about sanitation in the field, but what about sanitation in the packinghouses?
Kelsey: Food safety and sanitation is really a partnership between everyone from the field through the marketing of the product to ensure wholesome produce reaches the market. Sanitation in the packinghouse is crucial and is a large focus for Highland Fresh Technologies. Effective cleaning and sanitation programs in the packinghouse, particularly focused on food contact surfaces, storage areas, and produce handling equipment, not only minimize food safety risk factors, but also provide benefits in terms of product quality. Cleaning is the key to sanitation, as you cannot sanitize a dirty surface. But, the reward for an effective cleaning and sanitation program is not only reducing food safety risks, but enhancing product quality and improving arrivals. That is what clients utilizing our five-step program from the field through the packinghouse experience.