determine real packaging performance.

Packaging & Handling

Great packaging is critical to ensuring fruit quality is maintained to its final destination.

Packaging and handling materials — moulded trays, bulk bin liners, carton designs — all affect the forces that fruit experiences during handling and transit. But testing those effects under real commercial conditions has always been difficult. Lab compression tests tell part of the story. Drop tests tell another part. Neither tells you what actually happens to the fruit inside packaging as it travels through a real handling and transport system.
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RealAppleIQ™ measures the forces that fruit experiences in real handling scenarios — with your packaging in place. Compare materials, thicknesses, and configurations with actual measured force data. Understand how your packaging protects the fruit under the conditions it will actually face, and prove its performance to your customers with data they can see for themselves.

Test in context

Put RealAppleIQ™ through real handling conditions, with your packaging in place, and measure the forces that actually reach the fruit. Not a lab simulation — real force data from real-world handling. See exactly how well your packaging protects and supports the fruit, absorbing the impacts of complex, long-haul transport.

Prove performance

Give your customers the measured force data from your packaging under real handling conditions. They can see for themselves how your product performs — and how it compares. Performance claims backed by data are a different conversation entirely.

Optimize design and materials

Test different packaging materials, thicknesses, designs or configurations under the same conditions and compare the force profiles directly in RealDataIQ™. Data-driven design and material selection instead of subjective assessment or time consuming bruise development trials.

Effortless Tool Integrations

Seamlessly connect with your favorite tools.

See It In Action

“We’d always believed our foam insert outperformed the alternatives, but we’d never been able to prove it with numbers. RealAppleIQ™ gave us a force profile comparison that made the difference completely clear. It’s now part of every product development conversation we have.”

Luisa Sarot

Operations Manager,. New Zealand

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“This platform has transformed our project management, making collaboration a breeze.”

William Turner

Chief Product Officer

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“Our team’s productivity has skyrocketed thanks to the intuitive design and powerful features.”

Laura Bennett

VP of Human Resources

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“I love how easy it is to keep track of everything. It's made our operations so much smoother.”

David Carson

CEO, Techwave Solutions

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Frequently asked questions

Can we test packaging in a real packhouse rather than a lab?

Yes. The RealAppleIQ™ system is portable and can be operated wherever your packaging is being used. Testing in a real handling environment gives you force data that reflects actual commercial conditions — not a controlled lab approximation.

How do we compare two packaging materials directly?

Run measurement sessions with RealAppleIQ™ for each material under the same handling conditions and compare the force profiles in RealDataIQ™. The positional force map, histogram, and sensor charts make direct comparison straightforward. You can see at a glance where the differences are and how significant they are. RealBruiseIQ™ can determine the resulting bruise diameter on a real apple at a given impact force for a wide variety of materials.

Can the data be used to support product development decisions?

Yes. Force profile data from RealAppleIQ™ and RealBruiseIQ™ sessions can be used to inform material selection, thickness optimization, and design decisions during product development. It gives your development process a measurable performance benchmark that doesn’t depend on waiting for bruise development results.

Can we share the results with our customers?

Yes. Request a sub-license from Real Instruments. The sub-license is created and sent to you for distribution. You send your customer the packaged software installer and license file. This enables them to open the selected full measurement data and video on their own device and review it independently. You control which runs they can see and for how long.

Does this replace standard lab testing?

No — it complements it. Lab tests measure material properties under controlled conditions. RealAppleIQ™ measures what those properties mean for fruit under real handling conditions. Together they give a much more complete picture of packaging performance.

What does it cost?

Pricing is not listed on this website. Contact us to discuss options relevant to packaging and materials testing applications.

Real Instruments Limited — Turning the lights on in apple handling.