We are often asked why most commercial fruit juice companies choose to usefruit concentrates instead of fresh, natural fruit juices to make their drink ranges. The answer to this question is two-fold.
Firstly, concentrated fruit juice is easier and cheaper to transport than fresh fruit juice. Secondly, at the end of the day, concentrated fruit juices are still natural juices, they are just available in a more concentrated form with a lot of the water weight removed.
When you think about your business overheads, reducing the water content of your fruit juice will mean you can transport almost five times more juice for the same price as the same weight of fresh juice.
If you are shipping your juice ingredients to your processing and bottling facilities, then you don't want to add to your transportation costs any more than necessary. You can keep your business overheads down by buying fruit concentrates and then simply add fresh water back to it if you want to use your juice in an un-concentrated form.
How fruit juice concentrates are made
Fresh fruit ingredients grown for juicing is first washed and peeled (if necessary). The fruit is then carefully pressed or crushed to remove the juice. Depending on the type of fruit, it may then be filtered to remove unwanted seeds and pulp.
Once the fruit is juiced it is then pasteurized and put through a heat and vacuum system that effectively removes most of the water, usually somewhere between 80-90% of the water is removed. The resulting juice is then cooled and hermetically packaged.
NFC fruit juices
JC Dudley supply a wide range of 'not from concentrate'(NFC) fruit juices. These are minimally processed fruit juices that are particularly high in consumer demand at the moment for people actively looking to improve their health by eating and drinking more healthily.
NFC juices offer a fresh flavour with clearly recognisable fruits that people want to see on their ingredient labels. The difference between NFC juice and 'from concentrate' (FC) juice is that FC juice is heat-treated to reduce the water content, whereas NFC juice uses a technology that produces fresh fruit juice under low-temperature conditions, following pasteurisation.
The main difference is in the shelf-life with NFC juice being less than 45 days. Demand for NFC juices has significantly risen, especially in Europe, as part of the trend for healthier and more natural products.
Fresh fruit ingredients
Working in close relationship with our international food-chain partners, JC Dudley has direct access to sustainable, responsibly grow, raw fruit crops where they are grown, as well as a well established world-wide procurement system.
This means we have year-round ready access to fresh fruit ingredients that your business needs to manufacture your food or drink products. We can supply you with a regular, stable range of single-fruit or multi-blend fruit-based products to help maintain your production lines and help you with your new product innovations and research and development.
So no matter whether you are looking for a fruit concentrate supplier to help you create or adapt your product ingredients into a healthy alternative by removing refined white sugar in your baking recipes, or you want to introduce more healthy fruit-based ingredients into your yoghurt or ice cream lines, or if you want a reliable supply of NFC juices, thenget in touch with our friendly team! We are here to help.
