Cherries and beyond

Cherry is one of the most famous fruits produced in Yamagata Prefecture. The secret to its popularity is its beautiful color, juicy flesh and elegant sweetness. Making cherry fruits of beautiful color, shape and taste needs a lot of manpower and their meticulous care. Cherry- making process from harvesting, selecting, packaging to shipping concentrates in a very short period of time.

In addition to the recent labor shortage, the alternation of harvesting time due to the climate change and unpredictable weather conditions have caused more burden on both production and distribution sides than ever before. It reminds us of the fact that each cherry fruit is a product of day-to-day work of producers. If only we could save and prolong a life of cherries with our technology. This is a starting point for this project.

Leveraging the knowledge and skills accumulated as a gas dealer, Yamagata Sanso has been dedicated to developing innovative freshness preservation technology to keep fruits fresh longer. As an industry-academia-government collaboration with Keio University Institute of Advanced Biosciences and Yamagata Research Institute of Technology, this project was adopted as the Yamagata Bio-cluster Promotion Project.

Through multiple verifications, we finally attained our original gas composition, a finely- balanced composition of specific gases. With this technology, we succeeded in containing mold growth and thus sustaining good quality of cherries longer. The challenge we have faced for a long time is how to maintain the freshness of cherries and make them durable for long-haul transportation.

After experiencing trials and errors, we believe that our dream to ship Yamagata cherries to distant areas will steadily come true.

Of the total yield of cherries grown in Yamagata, exportable ones account for less than 1%. Thanks to this innovative technology, we will be able to overcome this 1% hurdle.

Launching the visionary brand of Time Magic and Time Protection Series project by Yamagata Sanso, we are about to make inroads in the world.

Starting with deals in Singapore, we are going to expand our sales channels from Asia to Europe, hopefully making Yamagata Sanso the first messenger of Yamagata cherries to tell their authentic delicious taste to the people around the world, which has not been done so far.