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MARL, the Greater Lisbon Supply Market, is Portugal’s largest wholesale market where farmers, retailers, and importers collect and dispatch fresh agro-products that feed close to three million people daily. Freshness, traceability, food, and packaging waste are fundamental issues to be tackled in the name of food safety and security. AlmaScience’s green tech, from sustainable chipless RFID to paper-based freshness sensors, is here to help.   

MARL: Fruit & vegetables’ dancefloor 

Visit the large MARL compound spread across 101 hectares on the outskirts of Lisbon and you’ll be drawn into a whirling ballet of agro-food product dispatch and business transactions. The Greater Lisbon Supply Market is the country's largest wholesale market, where farmers, retailers, and importers collect and dispatch fresh agro-products, just like what happens in similar markets in Paris (Rungis) and London (New Covent Garden Market).

Under its alignment of warehouses, labeled A01 to A10, MARL hosts fruit and vegetables, fish and meat, flowers, and agri-food products. The entire site is home to more than 840 operators. In the fruit and vegetable hangars, produce is so fresh it carries the morning dew and the remnants of the January rains that blanket Portugal.

Every weekday, MARL is a busy beehive, particularly at rush hour, with quick and friendly transactions, high speed as its dynamic beat. An invisible road code seems to apply to what may feel like chaos. Carts zoom from warehouse decks to giant trucks and smaller vans parked across the site, navigating with an innate logic that allows them to accelerate, rotate, stop, and park loosely with drivers’ gestures and eyesight. The buzz is thrilling. The business reflects how much freshness requires highly surgical practice and efficiency.

But beneath this orchestrated chaos lie three critical challenges that threaten efficiency and sustainability:

1. Traceability gaps: When hundreds of pallets move daily between warehouses and vehicles, losing track of a single shipment can mean waste, delays, or food safety risks.
2. Freshness uncertainty: Without real-time monitoring, contaminated or spoiled products can enter the supply chain undetected, endangering public health.
3. Environmental impact: Traditional tracking systems rely on plastic-based materials and electronic waste, while food waste itself remains a persistent problem.

How could one improve such a frantic dance while addressing these fundamental challenges?

Enhanced traceability with chipless RFID

AlmaScience – the Portuguese tech lab specializing in green solutions for the retail market and beyond – has effective innovation to offer the biggest wholesale food market feeding Greater Lisbon with fresh products.

In the MARL environment, where every minute counts and every pallet matters, AlmaScience's chipless RFID tags provide instant product identification throughout the supply chain. Unlike conventional RFID systems that rely on silicon microchips, AlmaScience uses cellulose-based alternatives: natural polymers replace plastics and electronics in smart devices and packaging.

The practical impact is immediate. Each pallet, crate, or individual box can be instantly identified as it moves from producer to warehouse to retailer – without the cost and electronic waste of traditional chip-based systems. For MARL operators handling thousands of transactions daily, this means complete traceability from farm to final destination, at a fraction of the cost and with zero electronic waste.

The technology enables distributors to track temperature-sensitive products, verify origin claims, and respond instantly to quality issues – all while supporting Portugal's commitment to circular economy principles.

Freshness made simple: PetriTag 

While traceability solves the "where is it?" question, freshness requires answering "is it safe?" in real time. This is where AlmaScience's PetriTag becomes essential for MARL's seafood operations.

"We've reached a point where everyone is aware of what we're putting into our bodies", explains Bruno Veigas, PetriTag researcher at AlmaScience. "Our food choices impact our physical and mental health, life expectancy, and independence. PetriTag aligns with that empowering feeling that it's up to us to make healthy choices and supports us in that mission."

PetriTag is a paper-based, portable bacterial detector designed specifically for the fish transport system. It allows distributors, fishers, and logistics operators to quickly check for harmful bacteria during transport, without the need for lab equipment or trained technicians. Using a colorimetric approach, PetriTag can detect up to four different types of bacteria simultaneously, providing instant visual confirmation of seafood safety.

"Implications are broad, thanks to the colorimetric approach, which has a low adaptation threshold”, says Luís Pereira, CTO at AlmaScience. "For now, PetriTag can detect specific types of bacteria that develop on fish, making it a multi-analysis tag capable of detecting four different bacteria at once".

Sustainable by design, it replaces conventional plastic-based testing materials with cellulose-based, biodegradable paper, reducing waste and environmental impact. Its lightweight, low-energy format also minimizes the carbon footprint of monitoring freshness and safety throughout the supply chain – critical in a market where seafood moves from dock to distributor within hours.

A European Imperative: Innovation Against Waste

The challenges facing MARL reflects a broader European and global imperative. As Stéphane Layani, Chairman of the World Union of Wholesale Markets, has noted: "To thrive, markets must embrace technological advancements like AI, which will help optimize operations, reduce waste, and build trust in transactions."

It's precisely this vision that AlmaScience's solutions bring to life. But the stakes extend beyond efficiency. Food waste and packaging waste represent two sides of the same sustainability crisis. While food waste has long been recognized as a preventable feature of consumer society, single-use plastic packaging poses an equally insidious problem. Once discarded, the plastics used to seal, protect, and extend shelf life can linger in landfills and oceans for centuries.

AlmaScience's develops green tech according to the Appropriate Lifespan Approach, effectively empowering packaging when and while it matters; once the packaging has outrun its utility, the technology disappears without environment impact. This approach addresses both challenges simultaneously: reducing food waste through better monitoring while eliminating the electronic and plastic waste of conventional packaging and tracking systems.

From Innovation to Impact

At MARL, from which close to three million people depend daily for fresh products, AlmaScience's green technology offers something increasingly rare: solutions that increase efficiency, reduce costs, and protect the environment simultaneously.

Chipless RFID ensures complete traceability without electronic waste. PetriTag provides real-time safety monitoring without laboratory infrastructure. Together, they represent a new paradigm for wholesale markets, one where technological sophistication and environmental responsibility are not competing priorities but complementary strengths.

In a sector where every hour counts and every product matters, these innovations prove that sustainability and performance aren't incompatible – they're inseparable. The frantic dance of MARL's daily operations can become not just faster and safer, but cleaner and greener too.

As Portugal positions itself at the forefront of sustainable innovation, the wholesale markets that feed the nation become testing grounds for solutions that could reshape food distribution across Europe and beyond.

About MARL

The Greater Lisbon Supply Market (MARL) was established as part of Portugal's wholesale market network, managed by SIMAB since 1993. Today, MARL serves as the country's largest wholesale hub, connecting producers, traders, and retailers while ensuring food security for the Lisbon metropolitan area. Learn more about MARL's history and sustainability initiatives.