Bursting with vitamins, natural juices and smoothies are popular drink choices among 5-A-DAY-conscious consumers. Ever-more creative combinations, like acai and pomegranate, have made their way to the supermarket shelves and shopping baskets.

The surge in popularity shows no signs of slowing down either – last year fruit juice and smoothies grew in retail value by 4.2 per cent to reach £1.8 billion, according to the British Soft Drinks Association.

By all accounts, it is a profitable market to tap into, run by specialist fruit suppliers like A1 Fruit. The company sources fruit directly from growers and co-ordinates global logistics and deliveries to clients throughout Europe. “The majority of the fruit we supply is processed into freshly squeezed fruit juices,” explains owner Miguel Sanchez. “These juices are not pasteurised or only lightly pasteurised, in order to ensure the true taste and the nutritional content of the fruit is not lost as it is with highly pasteurised ‘not from concentrated’ frozen juices and concentrated juice,” he says.

Sanchez thinks there is perhaps too much citrus being grown at the moment in the northern hemisphere. “The southern hemisphere is different – the panorama has changed. We used to bring a lot in from South America and now South Africa dominates.”

The biggest challenge at the moment, according to Sanchez, is the “strange” phytosanitary regulation imposed by the EU. “We are in fact being handcuffed by EU regulations put in place for table fruit.”

Even so, the company has been steadily expanding over the last two decades and during this time Sanchez has seen the changes the industry has undergone. “We are fortunate to have been able to increase the market penetration in the UK and abroad, and we now supply 1,500-1,750 tonnes of fruit a week,” he says. “The number of processors has gone down though; they have gone through rationalisation and there are fewer of the larger ones these days.”

So does the juicing sector offer growers better margins than supermarkets do? No, says Andrew Gibb, managing director of Coldpress, because no one grows fruit specifically for the juicing market. “It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship, certainly with apples. The second-grade fruit that isn’t suitable for fresh consumption can go into juice instead.”

UK-based Coldpress sources the majority of its fruit from Europe, with a few exceptions, such as passionfruit from Ecuador and Valencian oranges. The company’s USP is high-pressure processing – a production method that ensures the taste, colour, aroma and nutritional content of the fruit is not compromised by pasteurisation. “Pasteurisation unfortunately is too heavy handed to allow individual apple varieties like Pink Lady, Granny Smith and Braeburn to exhibit the many subtle flavour nuances on which their various longstanding reputations have been built,” according to the company.

At a time when consumers are increasingly favouring a fuss-free approach to food production, perhaps cold pressing is the future of the British juicing industry. —