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Turning bad bananas into cash

Niki Lyons

Story Added : 08th January 2010

North Queensland banana growers say turning their rejected fruit into new products will help boost profits.

Queensland's Department of Primary Industries and the CSIRO are looking at how new processing technology can turn bananas that do not meet retail standards into food products.

Australian Banana Growers Council (ABGC) spokesman Tony Heidrich says up to 30 per cent of crops end up as fertiliser for plantations.

"We don't get anything for that waste product at the moment," he said.

"We either turn it back into the paddock as organic matter or feed it to cattle, so there's no return to us.

"So if we can get anything as a result of work in this area then we're fully supportive of that and hopefully exploit it to the full degree."

Mr Heidrich says some countries are already using their unwanted bananas for bio-fuel and flour.

"You've only got to look at what the apple industry has achieved in recent years - where they've been able to develop technologies that allow them to put peeled apple into packaging and have that ... as long life and effectively compete them with snack foods," he said.

"If we could come up with something like that, that may be meant we could discard the peel if it had blemishes."

Story Added by ABC.
Date Added : 08th January 2010

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