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Parkside and the New Forest Fruit Company have launched a home compostable flexible packaging solution for its new range of ‘plant to packet’ sustainable dried strawberries. The solution is made with Parkside’s triplex Park2Nature material, which is TÜV certified as home compostable within 26 weeks in normal composting conditions and 12 weeks in an industrial composting facility. It is referred to as ‘plant to packet’ as the products are grown, processed, and packed on the New Forest Fruit Company’s farm in the New Forest, Hampshire, UK to ensure “the carbon footprint of each product is kept to an absolute minimum”. Staci Bye, business unit manager at Parkside, said: “Sustainable packaging is fundamental to our business, so we were thrilled to work with a brand whose ethos is so similar to our own. This partnership with New Forest Fruit Company saw us share a goal to develop a high-quality product that is packed as sustainably as possible – and that synergy shows in the final result.” Bye added: “It is particularly rewarding as these products represent a first for the UK snack market – the result of a novel combination of pulse drying and freeze drying. Despite the challenge of packing a first-to-market product, our innovation team worked in close collaboration with the customer to deliver excellent results once again.” The fruit snacks use a combination of pulse drying and freeze drying to desiccate the fruit pieces while retaining their original shape, flavours, and nutrients. Sandy Booth, owner of New Forest Fruit Company, said: “It was important to us that we found a company that could provide the compostable flexible packaging that had not only been tested and accredited but could also be designed to meet the specific needs of our strawberries". The Park2Nature range of packaging from Parkside uses a laminate material made using PEFC-accredited plant-based resources and is GMO and PLA-free.