Extend Shelf Life – With Sucrose Ester Coatings
Discover how a simple, transparent coating can preserve fruit freshness, reduce weight loss, and delay ripening — all while staying compliant with EU legislation.
Fresh fruit is highly perishable — colour changes, moisture loss, and microbial spoilage start soon after harvest.
Edible coatings are an effective way to protect fruit quality and reduce postharvest losses.
Our research shows that Sisterna sucrose esters, already permitted under EU regulation (E473), form a semi-permeable film that slows ripening and reduces water evaporation — keeping fruit marketable for longer.
In our in-house study, bananas were dipped in sucrose ester-based coatings.
The result? Slower colour development, less weight loss, and delayed sugar increase compared to uncoated fruit.
Why Use Sucrose Esters in Fruit Coating?
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Transparent & tasteless edible layer
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Slows down ripening and colour change
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Reduces weight loss = better shelf-life economics
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Approved for fresh fruit surface treatment (E473)
RECIPE COATING
PREPARATION AND COATING OF THE BANANAS
• Rinse the bananas with lukewarm water and dry with a soft cloth
• Cut the stems of the bananas and wrap them in parafilm
• Dip 7 bananas for 1 minute in the 3 different coatings (one is water). Make sure to mix all the bananas from different bunches
• Place the bananas on a grid for 1 hour to let the excess coating drip off
• Assign all the bananas with a code once the coating has dried
• Weigh all bananas
• Take a picture of all the bananas together
• Store the bananas in a climate cabinet (20°C, 55% RH)
Weight loss of the bananas
Weight loss = weight on the current day / initial weight (same banana). This gives a percentage of the remaining weight. The graph shows that the blank bananas have a greater weight loss than those with a coating. There is not much difference in weight loss over time between the two different sucrose ester coatings.
LEGISLATION
The EU legislation permits sucrose esters of fatty acid (E473) and sucroglycerides (E474) to be used in the category Entire fresh fruits and vegetables (04.1.1.) in quantum satis, for Surface treatment. The only other emulsifier permitted is MDG (E471), which can be used for surface treatment of certain fruits. Of course, other types of ingredients, like several stabilisers and waxes, are permitted on fresh fruit in the EU, like HPMC (E461), which is permitted under certain conditions. All information can be found in https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2008/1333/pdfs/eur_20081333_2013-06-01_en.pdf
In other parts of the world, many ingredients are permitted for the treatment of fresh fruits.
Find Your Local Distributor
Sisterna maintains a sales and promotion distribution network throughout Europe and the US. These exclusive distributors are frequently trained and updated with the latest developments and can thus provide technical help alongside the standard things such as brochures, samples and products.