ValleyHUB is Kalamazoo Valley Community Colleges Food Innovation Center’s (FIC) latest project. Its goal is to support the development of local produce supply chains and to bring the logistics of regional producers into the 21st century.
Since its inception a year ago, ValleyHUB has relied on InterCrate to help achieve its core mission of building a sustainable and healthy food system in Kalamazoo and greater Southwest Michigan.
Here’s what what one ValleyHUB manager had to say about Intercrate’s Aquatote 10.5:
“The Aquatote10.5 reusable produce containers have been a fixture of both our farm and food hub since we began using them in 2016. Stackable, durable, and easy to clean and sanitize, these containers are perfect for operations looking to reduce or remove the need for single-use products, such as boxes.”
By putting flexibility and quality first, we’ve helped ValleyHUB to cut down on waste as they continue to expand. Our long-lasting, easily cleaned, reusable crates free up ambitious farming projects to grow and grow without worrying about product loss or decay.
And it’s not just one job we’re doing over at ValleyHUB. InterCrate containers serve a variety of purposes at the Kalamazoo location, including:
- Washing and storing produce pre-processing or sale.
- Packing various fruits and vegetables for distribution through our food hub.
- Packing processed and packaged product for sale through our food hub.
- Storing harvested product from our farm in both dry and cold storage.
- Provided to food hub suppliers to pack and harvest produce in to (eliminating the need for them to wash and sanitize their own containers)
- Donating product to local food pantries and kitchens.
By enabling groups such as FIC to better meet their ecological and monetary goals, we hope to sustain farming/business practices that work and to invest in the ones that mark the path to the future.
FIC is a forward-looking farming initiative with a far-reaching vision; ValleyHub and InterCrate have worked together to improve the agricultural landscape by making innovation easy. Intercrate is proud to be the choice of both family-run farms that go back generations as well as projects on the cutting edge of agriculture like ValleyHUB.