Their idea stemmed from conversations around plastic bags and the recent move from supermarkets to ban them. But they decided to focus on the stickers, attached to individual fruits. The "pesky little stickers" might seem useless at first glance. However, they are important, containing a price lookup number (PLU) so the fruit is easily identified by checkout staff.

The students hope their plastic-free, biodegradable sticker idea will revolutionise how fruit is labelled. And while the make-up of their sticker material is a trade secret, it uses a by-product of apples.

Wixon said it required an "intensive amount" of testing, and a number of prototypes never made it.

"Since we are still in the research and development stage, we hope to continue our testing and look forward in to the future of Bayuble to see what we can do, how we can make our products better and expand our product range. This is not the end."

Nzherald.co.nz reported that while the students have put in a lot of hard work, they were still very surprised that their company -Bayuble Woodford House- was named Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) Company of the Year for Hawke's Bay.