SSS Strawberries combats waste with new freeze-dried berries

A LOCAL strawberry farm is trialling new ways to combat horrendous mass food waste statistics.

BERRY NICE: Gina Dang and Toan Nguyen with samples of the new freeze-dried strawberries. Picture: Mike Knott BUN231118STR2

A LOCAL farm is trialling ways to combat horrendous mass food waste.

SSS Strawberries has been researching ways to reduce its imprint on global food wastage and the business's newest idea doubles as a tasty snack.

Chief financial officer Toan Nguyen said the farm's latest alternative was to freeze-dry strawberries for wholesale use, using strawberries that would usually be scrapped because they were not up to market standards.

"We have so much waste on our farm and over the years we have been looking at finding a way to actually do something with the waste," Mr Nguyen said.

"We tried making jam, but there's only so much jam you can make, and then we came across this freeze drying.

"I think there's so much potential with this technology."

Mr Nguyen said the freezed-dried strawberries would be ground into a powder for wholesale use, so confectionery companies could use Australian fruit to flavour products.

"There's a lot of artificial strawberry products that are currently being used and at the moment," Mr Nguyen said.

"They (companies) are also importing strawberry powder but why do that when you can have Australian-made?"

Mr Nguyen said he could not imagine how much food waste the Bundaberg region produced, considering how much his own farm was making.

Food waste costs the Australian economy $20 billion each year, according to national food rescue organisation OzHarvest.

More than 5 million tonnes of food ends up in landfill.