Banana Barge
Purpose-built banana display for Coles, maximising stock capacity while reducing bruising and waste. From SolidWorks CAD through prototyping, a 6-month pilot, and national production handover. Deployed across 500+ stores and still in use 10+ years later.
The Banana Barge is a purpose-built fresh produce display fixture designed for Coles Supermarkets, one of Australia's largest grocery retailers. With bananas being one of the highest-grossing items in the fresh produce section, Coles needed a fixture that could hold significantly more stock on the floor daily while protecting a notoriously fragile product. The design challenge was balancing display capacity, product preservation, hygiene, and ease of replenishment, across stores of varying footprints, within the constraints of offshore manufacture and long-term retail durability.
Bananas are high-volume and high-value but physically fragile, existing display solutions weren't purpose-built for the product, leading to bruising, waste, and suboptimal capacity. Coles required a fixture that could increase daily on-floor stock, reduce damage through better geometry and surface treatment, adapt to different store footprints through modular sizing, and withstand the demands of a wet-clean retail environment over years of use.
Research focused on observing in-store replenishment behaviours and understanding operational constraints, reach, load height, stock flow from back-of-house to floor, and cleaning routines. Materials were benchmarked for hygiene performance, impact resistance, finish longevity, and suitability for a wet-clean environment. The goal was to reduce bruising while keeping replenishment and cleaning simple for store staff.
The process moved from in-store observation and material benchmarking through SolidWorks CAD development, multiple prototype rounds, a formal in-store pilot, and offshore manufacture, with each phase directly informing the next. The 6-month pilot at Coles Brighton was the critical validation gate before committing to national production.
The Banana Barge is a stepped, oval-form display fixture in three modular sizes, built from Victorian Ash timber, 304 stainless steel, and 6mm Haircell ABS. Stepped geometry increases on-floor capacity and product visibility; smooth contact surfaces and careful edge radii minimise bruising; modular construction adapts to any store footprint and simplifies transport and installation.
The Banana Barge was deployed nationally across 500+ Coles supermarkets following the successful Coles Brighton pilot. Still in use 10+ years after initial rollout, a strong indicator of durability, operational fit, and store team adoption. Directional feedback indicated improved display capacity and reduced damage, though no metrics were published.
This project reinforced how small geometry and material choices directly influence product preservation and store workflows, details that are invisible to shoppers but critical to the people using the fixture every day. The 6-month pilot was the most valuable part of the process: it surfaced edge cases that no amount of CAD modelling could predict, and gave the design real-world validation before the cost of national production was committed. It also strengthened my end-to-end confidence across CAD, prototyping, pilot, and offshore manufacture, a path I've applied to every physical project since.