Eximcrop introduces the pooling of foldable crates (‘smart boxes’) in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus region.
Pooling is a principal example of a new global trend – sharing economy when the business model is based on the collective use of goods and services, exchange, and rent instead of owning them. Instead of a single-use transport packaging for fresh fruit and vegetable products, with the pooling service companies can rent high-quality plastic crates and significantly decrease the price for packing while improving the quality of produce by the sharp reduction of product losses in the supply chain beginning from the producer to the final consumer, and making products more accessible to a consumer.
The project pilot starts in May 2023 in Georgia, where Eximcrop delivered 10 thousand smart boxes.
Smart boxes will substitute cardboard and one-way plastic boxes and be used for B2B supplies of fresh produce. Smart boxes are equipped with the RFID sticker, which automatically accounts for them with acoustic scanners and uploads information in the system in less than one second.
The system has been well-known in the EU since the early 90s, when the representatives of fruit and vegetable auctions in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany created the company Euro pool system, which is currently one of the global leaders in the pooling of reversible foldable containers. Also, retail chains create a stable demand for pooling services, stimulate efficiency improvements, and introduce logistics innovations.
By the end of 2022, the largest operators of pooling systems in the European Union managed a stock of more than 1 billion reusable foldable plastic boxes, making over 6 billion container turnovers annually. The turnover of these companies reaches 2 billion EUR.