The Melinda brand and products are well known to Italian consumers, with more than 400,000 tons of apples ending up on supermarket shelves each year. Less well known though is the world behind the name Melinda. Can you give us some insight into your organisation?

The consortium was established in 1989 in Cles, in the province of Trento, and comprises 16 cooperative companies, for a total of about 4,000 fruit farmers cultivating 6,700 (square metres?) of orchards in the Val di Non and Val di Sole valleys in Trentino. Among the best-known varieties cultivated there are the Val di Non PDO apples, such as the Golden Delicious, Red Delicious and Renetta Canada, Trentino PGI apples, such as Gala, Fuji, or Granny Smith, and other varieties such as Morgana, Dolce Vita, Kissabel and SweeTango. As a consortium, we are strongly rooted in the local communities, with 70 percent of the supply chain being locally based, where we employ more than 1,300 people directly and about 14,000 indirectly. Thanks to a turnover in excess of 300 million, export figures in the range of more than 30 percent of production and a brand name recognised by 98 percent of consumers in Italy, we can safely say that we are one of the great success stories of the cooperative sector in this country.

Your orchards are located in areas of great scenic and natural beauty, such as the Non and Sole Valleys. How do you reconcile an annual output of 400,000 tonnes of apples with quality and respect for the environment and landscape?

Here in Trentino growing apples is an ancient tradition, exemplified by the fact that our orchards have become an integral part of the landscape, blending perfectly into the natural environment of our valleys. On top of this, every step of the production process is designed to minimise environmental and human impact. In 97 percent of our orchards we use the drip irrigation system, with a network of drip lines that release water slowly to the roots of the trees, which, unlike the traditional overhead sprinkler systems, can reduce energy consumption, minimise soil erosion and allow us to cut water consumption by 30%. With regard to plant health measures, we have recently introduced the S.O.PH.I.A. system, or Spray Overcanopy PHytosanitary Innovative Application, provided by Netafim, a technology developed for orchards that allows the application of pesticide products, in just 15 minutes per hectare, exclusively to the plant organs in a targeted manner, limiting the impact on the environment. With Xfarm Technologies, a leading company in the digitization of the agribusiness sector, and dss+, a company that provides sustainability consulting, we have launched a project for regenerative agriculture, based on a platform for collecting and evaluating a large amount of data to increase efficiency and reduce waste. We also intend to implement regenerative farming techniques, which maintain organic matter and biodiversity while promoting the soil’s carbon sequestration capacity, thus mitigating emissions.

How are you organised in terms of energy supply for processing?

All the energy we use in production, processing and storage comes from renewable sources, specifically, the local hydroelectric power plants. Moreover, between 2008 and 2011, we installed photovoltaic panels that cover 10% of our energy needs, with an output of 4.82 million Kwh per year. We are currently working on a project to produce an additional 4.84 million Kwh, doubling the total output. This is all about cutting costs while also reducing emissions and improving the quality of the environment

And speaking of reducing environmental impact and CO2 emissions, the apple storage system is also designed to be sustainable. How do Melinda's underground cells work?

Our underground storage cells is one of Melinda's flagship projects, a trailblazing storage technique invented by us, which exploits a local specificity consisting of the decommissioned dolomite mines. So, instead of building new warehouses, which would have considerably impacted the landscape and required a considerable amount of energy for refrigeration, we came up with the idea to take advantage of a natural environment hidden in the heart of the mountain to store our fruit, creating the world's first and only naturally refrigerated fruit storage facility. It is located 900 meters from the entrance to the Rio Maggiore mine, about 300 meters below ground level, and consists of 34 cells, each of which can hold nearly 1,000 tonnes of apples. We have calculated that, compared to aboveground storage, this system saves us 1.9 GW/h per year, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 2,000 people; furthermore, this underground facility does not require the use of polyurethane foam panels for isolation, which are particularly difficult to dispose of. Besides allowing us to save energy and cut CO2 emissions, this storage technique also enables us to store the fruit for longer periods of time, since the temperature is constant at 1° C and the oxygen level too is constantly at 1%. At present, we store about 30,000 tonnes of apples each year in these underground cells, although there are plans to expand the facility by 30% to a further 10,000 tonnes.

Besides this unique underground storage facility, you will shortly be introducing a unique fruit transportation system, the apple cable car. Can you tell us how it works?

Until now we have transported apples from the processing plants to the underground cells by road, but that is about to change. We recently won a call for bids for agribusiness logistics, ranking second out of more than a hundred entrants, thanks to our cable car project that will provide significant savings in CO2 emissions. We will therefore access a 4-million-euro grant, covering 40 percent of the forecasted 10-million-euro budget, to build a 1.3-kilometer-long single-cable facility capable of transporting 460 stackable containers an hour from the processing plant in Predaia to the Rio Maggiore mine where our underground storage cells are located. We have calculated that the apple cable car will save us 6,000 truck trips, for a total travel distance of 12,000 kilometres.

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