Zest Labs Demonstrates Proactive Fresh Food Management throughout the Supply Chain

ROGERS, AR--(Marketwired - March 23, 2017) - Zest Labs Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecoark Holdings, Inc. (OTCQX: EARK) and provider of Zest Fresh, a freshness management solution for produce, meats, seafood and dairy recently demonstrated the benefits of a field-to-shelf, proactive freshness management solution, as highlighted by a recent industry white paper discussing available technologies to address the issue.

Historically, post-harvest agriculture operations have been managed by experience and summary reports or audits. Whether due to the very distributed nature of harvesting and processing, or the predominantly manual processing involved, little has been done to collectively monitor each of these processes in real time. While many other industries have adopted real-time process monitoring and feedback to improve quality consistency -- such as car manufacturers in the 1980s -- this methodology has not yet been adopted in post-harvest agriculture. Zest Labs has shown the benefits of real-time monitoring and feedback for post-harvest processing, through a significant improvement in the quality consistency of delivered product.

A recent article, "Preemptive Freshness Management," published by Chainlink Research, highlights the benefits of real-time, data driven feedback in managing the fresh food harvest and distribution processes. "Zest Fresh leads the industry in providing preemptive freshness management capabilities for fresh food, addressing core industry challenges with its approach. Zest Fresh offers both the breadth and depth to cover critical processes from the field to the pack house, and through distribution and retail delivery," stated Bill McBeath, Chief Research Officer at Chainlink Research. As the Chainlink Research article states, empowering the worker in real time is critical to delivering quality consistency, which is a primary contributor to customer satisfaction and avoiding fresh food waste.

Zest Fresh monitors products at the pallet level from harvest through pack house operations, providing real-time feedback that empower workers to maintain best practices. Real-time feedback includes alerts, process specific mobile applications and web dashboards, all of which reflect pallet-level process adherence against product and vendor specific parameters. Zest Fresh feedback includes prescriptive corrective actions that consider many variables including the current product condition and product volume at each process step, processing equipment availability, daily product demand, and required freshness for planned shipments. The knowledge driving the corrective actions, combined with the real-time availability of the information, equip workers to make better tradeoffs, and consistently deliver high quality product.

"Zest Fresh provides an end-to-end solution for managing freshness, using automated data capture and Cloud-based, real-time analytics to enable workers to make the best decisions," states Peter Mehring, CEO of Zest Labs. "By knowing the condition of each individual pallet, and the current constraints at each process step, Zest Fresh can optimize the trade-offs at key decision points in real-time, making it easy for workers to do the right thing."

About Zest Labs Inc.

Zest Labs is a company of passionate problem solvers, addressing the significant challenge of reducing fresh food waste. Zest Fresh is a fresh food management solution that focuses on three primary value propositions -- consistent food quality, reduced waste, and improved food safety. Zest Fresh empowers workers with real-time tools and alerts that improve efficiency while driving quality consistency through best practice adherence on every pallet. Zest Fresh drives both business success and environmental sustainability by significantly reducing waste. Zest Labs delivers best-in-class solutions such as Zest Fresh, by addressing the science at the core of the problem, and then provides the tools that make it easy to do "the right thing" every time.

To learn more about Zest Labs, please click here.
To watch a video about Zest Fresh, please click here.

About Ecoark Holdings Inc.

Based in Rogers AR and founded in 2011, Ecoark Holdings, Inc. is a growth-oriented company based in the retail and logistics hub of Northwest Arkansas. Ecoark's portfolio of technology solutions increase operational visibility and improve organizational transparency for a wide range of corporate clients.

Ecoark's technologies fight waste in Operations, Logistics, and Supply Chains across the evolving global economy. Ecoark's portfolio of companies and technologies work to integrate people, processes, and data in order to overcome ingrained operational hurdles and create new revenue streams.

Ecoark's vision is to expose the cycles of waste that reduce efficiency and cost effectiveness across the business landscape. Ecoark's strategically acquired subsidiaries have anticipated and responded to key economic factors impacting every business today.

Ecoark addresses these vital economic factors through four active subsidiaries, Zest Labs, Eco3d, Pioneer Products, and Magnolia Solar.

For more information, please visit www.ecoarkusa.com.

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