Features

  • 20 Mar
    Seatrade introduces a juice dedicated ship

    Seatrade introduces a juice dedicated ship

    Figure 1 Juice Express - General 3D design visualizationA highly specialized juice tanker is close to completion and will shortly enter service. The newly developed Juice Express has just been delivered (12 March 2018) to Seatrade and Tampa Juice Inc.

    The concept for this juice tanker project started in September 2013 after a thorough investigation into continuation of the juice trade between Moin (Costa Rica) and Tampa (USA).

    Currently, this trade route is serviced by the Joint Frost, a juice tanker with a capacity of more than 1300 tonnes of frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ). Since 1999, the Joint Frost has been technically operated by Seatrade and commercially operated by chartering partners.

    The Juice Express project was developed to expand the juice transport capacity beyond the Joint Frost, due to predictions of both the volume and variety of juice cargo changing in the future. This prompted Seatrade to work on detailed specification throughout 2014, which resulted in the tendering package for the yard.

    Seatrade’s broad experience with juice transport over the past 20 years has been used in the development of Juice Express design in close cooperation with chartering partners and a Dutch design and engineering company. With the Seatrade Newbuilding Department in charge, the team developed a new juice tanker concept with some ambitious targets.

    Juice Express would have to accommodate more than twice as much cargo as the Joint Frost using the same main engine fuel consumption and service speed. This impressive goal was achieved during the hull and propeller design stage. This process also included hull optimization for the specific trade between Costa Rica and the US. The vessel can easily be adjusted for other trade routes as well.

    In 2015, Seatrade engaged in extensive shipyard market research. Halfway through the year, Guangxin Shipbuilding & Heavy Industry (GSHI) located in the Guangdong province in South China, was contracted for the building of the Juice Express. Besides the Juice Express, Seatrade entered into an agreement with the same yard to build four handy size reefer vessels of 300 000 ft3. These vessels are particularly designed for transhipment and transportation of frozen fish, squid and, alternatively, shipment of cooled citrus fruits and potatoes. The end result of both projects brought in some excellent additions to the Seatrade fleet.

    Juice Express

    The Newbuilding Department of Seatrade Groningen joined forces with Seatrade’s Chartering, Technical and Operation Departments, to arrive at the most optimal ship design result. On top of that, sea going staff were invited to give practical input for the development process.

    The controllable pitch propeller has an optimum diameter, in combination with optimized hull lines, ensuring the best possible efficiency and lowest possible fuel consumption. The Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) is 23% more efficient compared with IMO requirements for phase 1. For optimum manoeuvring, a balanced spade rudder has been installed, operated by a ram-type steering gear and a tunnel type bow thruster installed in the forward part of the vessel. On the flush self-sustained main deck area of 900m2, a container crane operates that is able to lift 40 tonnes at a radius of 30m suitable for containerized cargoes, general cargo and project cargo. The latest generation of water ballast treatment systems comply with IMO and USCG regulations.

    Juice system

    The orange juice is mainly shipped as FCOJ, although in recent years, there has been an increase in the demand for not-from-concentrate (NFC) juice. In order to be flexible, the juice system has been designed to load/unload and transport FCOJ and NFC juice in cylindrical stainless steel (type 316ltr) juice tanks. The vessel has four cargo holds. Cargo holds number one, two and four are insulated and fitted with cylindrical juice tanks. Hold number three is a box shaped reefer cargo hold intended for reefer containers with juice bins or other reefer cargo. Additionally, this cargo hold provides for future options for juice system expansion. Hold number three could be insulated and four additional cylindrical tanks could be located inside. This modification depends on juice market developments. From a technical perspective, Seatrade gained ample experience during an earlier Joint Frost modification project.

    In addition, cargo holds number one and two are divided by insulated bulkheads to be able to create different temperature zones and provide further juice loading flexibility. Cargo hold number one accommodates one tank dedicated to Frozen Concentrated Pineapple Juice (FCPJ), FCOJ or NFC and three tanks have been appropriated for FCOJ or NFC. Cargo hold number two accommodates four tanks for FCOJ and/or NFC and cargo hold number four accommodates four tanks suitable for NFC only.

    Juice tank capacities

    The system has been designed with following parameters:

    • Total maximum juice tank volume – 2386 m3
    • Total maximum juice tank carrying capacity (maximum weight of the cargo) – 2958 tonnes

    Juice pumps

    The vessel has been designed with a theoretical port time (during loading or unloading) of below 24 hours. This includes manoeuvring and mooring operations. However, sufficient manifold connections have to be provided by the juice terminal. Pump rates of FCOJ, FCPJ and NFC are as follows:

    • Pump capacity NFC of 81 m3 per hour
    • Pump capacity FCOJ of 56 m3 per hour
    • Pump capacity FCPJ of 56 m3 per hour

    In total three NFC pumps, four FCOJ pumps and one FCPJ have been installed in the cargo holds and the loading manifold has the possibility for five juice segregations.

    Inert gas installation

    The nitrogen system has been installed on board to prevent oxidation of juice cargo. Nitrogen produced on board, or alternatively delivered from the shore, is used to inert all twelve juice tanks. A separate connection is provided in the manifold for supply and discharge of nitrogen from ashore. The on board installed nitrogen generator has a maximum capacity of 250 m3 per hour and 99% purity.

    Cargo tanks cleaning installation

    A central ‘Cleaning-In-Place’ (CIP) system is available on board for cleaning and disinfection of the juice tanks and the process systems in the cargo holds. The CIP stainless steel tanks required for cleaning operations are located in forward part of the vessel.

    Cargo cooling system

    A brine cooling system consisting of two units has been installed with ammonia as primary refrigerant. The cooled brine is transported through the pipes in vessel’s sides to feed the coolers in each temperature zone of the juice cargo holds. In total, there are five different temperature zones. The holds have been sufficiently insulated to keep the consumption of the refrigeration plant as low as practical. The maintained temperature in the holds with the stainless steel tanks can be set between minus 10°C and plus 2°C, depending on juice temperature settings.

    Reefer containers

    Fifteen reefer containers with the possible addition of juice bins, will be carried inside the cargo hold number three. Moreover, the vessel is prepared for the loading of additional reefer containers on the main deck. There are 58 reefer sockets on the main deck allowing for flexible loading operations, which can be performed by the vessel’s own container crane located on starboard side.

    Newbuilding stage

    All systems, including the juice system itself, need to be in full operating condition before vessel delivery. However, the juice system can only be fully commissioned during the first loaded voyage. With this in mind, experts from the juice system manufacturer, together with the Seatrade Newbuilding Team and the crew of Juice Express, will be testing and commissioning the system in the second quarter of 2018. After that, the vessel will be fully commissioned and ready for juice transport operations under SeacatLine.

    By Caroline Calder Features
  • 18 Jan
    A STAR IS BORN. LEMON JUICE GETS THE RED-CARPET TREATMENT

    A STAR IS BORN. LEMON JUICE GETS THE RED-CARPET TREATMENT

    Lemon juice is replacing citric acid as an acidifier in more and more products and it is moving to the top of the ingredients list and featuring more and more on the front label. It is being used as an acidifier in juice blended drinks where lemon juice concentrate is being used for tartness and other products that go from yoghurt to a very wide range of products. In non-alcoholic beverages lemon is considered to add the refreshing character to herbal, vegetable and fruit beverages and stands third behind orange and apple in the table of strongest flavours in non- alcoholic beverage product launches last year.

    In terms of world lemon juice supply for the period 2016/17 Argentina is way ahead at 61% leaving the nearest country, Spain, trailing at just 15%. With 75% of Argentina’s fruit harvest going to industrial use compared with only 35% across the other main sources of supply. Small fresh fruit exporters are losing ground and share to the big producers. Predictions are that demand for lemon juice will continue to grow and diversify into new usages and that new trends and changing consumer habits call for higher standards of fruit production and juice processing. Only processors that can meet these new standards will be capable of supplying lemon juice for the front label.

    Following his presentation at the Juice Summit on trends in the lemon juice industry, Fruit Juice Focus caught up with Santiago Martinez Founder of U-Citrus, a Uruguayan based sales and logistics structure for world-wide supply of fruit juices to talk in depth about how new customers are using lemon juice in a number of different ways.

    FullSizeRender[1] Santiago Martinez pic

    Fruit Juice Focus (FJF): Can you tell us about the changes in the ingredients list for fruit juices and how lemon juice has become a prime ingredient in recent years?

    Santiago Martinez (SM) There are three key changes and I will outline them here.

    Unlike other juices – particularly the main juices such as orange or apple, lemon has always been treated as a minor ingredient and not a fruit juice in its own right, except obviously for salad dressings.

    What we are seeing now on the demand side are changes within the ingredient list. Firstly, lemon as an ingredient has gone from practically non-existent to existent. Historically citric acid has been widely used as an acidifier in fruit juices and other products. This is not necessarily the case anymore. If you are launching a beverage product nowadays that claims to be natural you should not use citric acid as an ingredient. You need to use a fruit juice, and this is where we see the rise in popularity for lemon juice as a replacement for citric acid.

    With the huge rise in new product launches worldwide in recent years (see fig 1) claiming freshness and sustainability as a major selling point (reportedly 20% year on year for the past five years) a major opportunity has arisen for lemon juice to become the ingredient of choice to help these products fulfil these claims.

    The second key change is where lemon appears in the ingredients list for a functional purpose. Many of the new super fruit juices and super veggies are looking for ingredients that will provide the freshness that consumers desire. And lemon is the answer. You only need to look at the explosion of new launches in the beverages market and you will find that lemon is not only being used as an acidifier in these products but also increasingly to add that touch of freshness.

    And thirdly is the launch of the new lemonades (see fig 2). This is fantastic news for lemon because the enormous difference now is that the new lemonades are using upwards of 10% to 14% lemon juice content where normally you would have seen as low as 1 or ½ % in a typical multifruit nectar. Each glass of lemonade that replaces a glass of nectar in the consumer’s share of stomach represents a 10 or 20-fold increase in lemon juice consumption.

    Let’s take the Hollywood analogy and you can see how lemon juice has risen from a bit part player to a star role in the ingredients list. When you watch the credits roll at the end of the movie in the cinema there is a long list of names that nobody cares about scrolling up the screen. Lemon in the ingredients list has many times been the equivalent to “safety guard #3”. But now lemon can be seen in the opening credits as one of the stars or main characters of the production. That’s how much things have changed for lemon over the past few years.

    Why – because lemon is fresh.

    It is lemon juice plus watermelon, lemon juice plus herbs, lemon juice plus strawberry. All the other juices or ingredients are now no longer the main character. The main character is now lemon.

    And another interesting development, and I refer to my Hollywood analogy again, when lemon is the lead character, the star of the ingredients appears on the front label – this movie star needs to go to the hairdressers, to be well dressed for the red carpet. This means that the quality of the lemon juice at this level needs to be the best, whereas when lemon juice was just an acidifier at the end of an ingredient list of 10 fruits nobody really cared about the freshness or the colour of this lemon.

    The changes I see are: firstly, the replacement of citric acid.  Secondly lemon as a character of freshness in this new range of beverage launches. And thirdly, lemon as the main fruit. All this means we will have to focus much closer in the quality of the lemons we produce and supply. Another point to consider when talking about quality is AR’s. When lemon is not a tiny ingredient anymore, a whole new level of quality parameters need to be reached.

    FJF: This is a whole new set of rules and regulations then, being introduced for the lemon industry along with associated costs?

    SM: Yes, but basically those are being already matched by the main suppliers from the main countries of origin. At the same time, some origins will not be able to reach the new quality requirements that will become the new world standard.

    FJF: Lemon juice is obviously a good business to be in currently. You source your lemons from Argentina, can you tell us about industry and market conditions there at present?

    SM: Yes, we have an easier life than many other colleagues in the fruit juice business. Right now, lemon is a very healthy sector to be in.

    The good news about Argentina is that 75% of lemons are produced for industry already. The whole region is industry focused will be even more in the near future.

    If you look back at the orange fruit juice industry in Argentina it was larger than Brazil in the 1960s. You can see there a very easy example of what can be achieved when you focus in producing for industry at the correct geography.

    FJF: Are lemons resilient to disease such as citrus greening?

    SM: Yes, they are resilient to some diseases. Most of the orange trees were killed by diseases but the lemon trees survived. But if you are talking about HLB then there is no good news. HLB will arrive and we will have to live with it. We will have to do what countries like Brazil are doing and learn from their experience.

    FJF: Do you see any other countries or regions competing with Argentina?

    SM:  To be very honest, a good business will always create its own competition. This is a reality. Argentina does have an advantage, but will have to increase its focus in producing for industry and setting the world’s highest quality standards.

    The serious global buyers who are looking for significant supply of lemon juice concentrate with strict parameters of freshness, colour, traceability and the lowest AR’s content will have few alternatives to Argentina origin.

    FJF: Do you see the trend for lemon slowing any time soon? With the trends of sustainability and naturalness growing in developed countries they appear to be prepared to pay the price for quality and provenance, particularly the younger generation.

    SM: Yes, what is going on for lemons stems from the demand side. The demand figures are very interesting. We are growing our supply year after year and the demand is still there and will continue to grow along with the increasing new product launches that are promoting natural ingredients and freshness.

    To conclude: we are seeing larger production figures than ever before, and we are seeing the demand growing year by year. Our sales figures have grown substantially, specially to those customers who pack products based on these new trends. The new customers – those that are launching these exciting new beverage products on the market – are increasing their consumption year after year. It is definitely an upward trend. From the lemon industry’s point of view – long may it continue. Everyone is a winner.

    By Caroline Calder Features
  • 17 Jan
    From Rejected Fruit to Premium Juice. How a leading Swedish grocery chain teamed up with a small start-up business to produce premium juice from the fruit that nobody wanted.

    From Rejected Fruit to Premium Juice. How a leading Swedish grocery chain teamed up with a small start-up business to produce premium juice from the fruit that nobody wanted.

    Just over a year ago two young entrepreneurs approached the Swedish grocery chain ICA offering to take their rejected fruit and recycle it into bottles of high quality fruit juice that ICA could buy back and sell in their supermarkets. This would reduce waste, generate income for both companies and benefit the environment and society. Simple and very effective – as some of the best ideas are. This circular approach to resources and waste management was recognised as serving as a source of inspiration for the whole of the retail trade in the region and the initiative was shortlisted for the Nordic Council Environment Prize 2017.
    Peter Hägg was the senior category manager at the ICA fruit and vegetable division when he started up this project with Rescued Fruit – now called Rescued – back in 2016. Peter is currently responsible for sponsorships at ICA and is involved in sponsoring selected humanitarian causes such as the Red Cross and the Pink Ribbon Childhood Foundation. Peter will return to his previous position in the fruit and veg team later this year.

    The ICA Group is a retail company with 1300 grocery stores in Sweden. The fruit and vegetable section of the business where the Rescued Fruits initiative was first launched is situated in Helsingborg and employ upwards of 80 people working within category development and the buying and replenishing of fruit and vegetables for all the depots within Sweden.

    ‘This circular approach to resources and waste management was recognised as serving as a source of inspiration for the whole of the retail trade in the region’

    Rescued, then called Rescued Fruits was founded in Helsingborg in 2015. The background was that there is too much good fruits and vegetables thrown away, unnecessarily. Rescued, salvage fruit and vegetables which otherwise would be wasted, fruit and vegetables that do not fit into corporate production. For example, bruised apples, wrong sized pears or weird-looking carrots. They check, sort and wash everything gently and then turn the goodies into great juice. The different kinds vary depending on the season, which means flavours vary too. The juices are sold mainly in coffee shops, restaurants and selected grocery stores in Sweden. Rescued now has 8 employees and has increased revenues by 237 % during the period 2016-17.

    Here Peter Hägg from ICA talks to Fruit Juice Focus about his experience of the Rescued initiative he helped to launch and why it is important today that ideas such as these should be replicated worldwide.

    Peter Hagg

     

    Fruit Juice Focus (FJF): How did ICA get involved with Rescued, how did this whole idea come about?
    Peter Hägg (PH): Normally it is not very easy for a small company, such as Rescued was then, to just walk into the offices of a large company like ICA and say we have a business idea can we have a contract please! Which is exactly what Truls Christenson and Cecilia Larsson did when they approached us at the Helsingborg offices of ICA. It did help that at the Helsingborg offices we have a forward-thinking management team which were able to speed up the acceptance and commencement of the project.

    These young entrepreneurs came into our office during the autumn of 2015 having just turned 29 and 19. And talk about good timing! The initial meeting with Truls and Cecilia took place one month before we were setting up the strategy for the coming year.

    They had some interesting questions regarding our business. They observed that the ICA operation in Helsingborg imported a large amount of fruit and vegetables and suggested that there must be waste in our supply chain.

    I was thinking about that for a while and I thought no, we don’t have much waste really. Especially not for apples where we know we have one of the smallest percentages that we record as waste in our warehouse – it’s barely 1.8% or close to this.

    But when I then looked at what 1.8% was in actual kilos it turned out to be 8000 kilos of apples which equates to approximately 11,000 bottles of juice during the course of one year. I then thought in more detail about the waste aspect of our business.

    Of course, those kilos I referred to above for apples are not constant from one week to another at that same level. It can vary a lot over time. It could be just a small amount of damaged items or it could be a complete container that is deemed as being of unsuitable quality or damaged in some way that has arrived and is sitting in our warehouse. This might mean 24 tonnes of fruit is not usable.
    On these occasions we call the supplier and discuss what to do with the fruit since the quality is not in line with the agreed specification.

    Do they want us to sort it? This would cost some money. Do they want us to send it back? This would cost the supplier money organising return transport. Or do they want us to try selling it for a discount price? Thereby reducing all profit and sometimes reducing normal turnover of accepted fruit with normal margin. If the above solutions are rejected the products will end up as landfill gas (biogas) and that will also end up as a dumping cost for each pallet. These are the normal solutions for a container of rejected fruit that arrives at our Helsingborg depot.
    After reflecting on this we realised that Truls and Cecilia’s proposal could make sense and we agreed to talk more.

    FJF: Can you explain in more detail what Rescued were proposing?
    PH: The business idea Rescued put on the table was that they would take all rejected fruit off our hands. Truls and Cecilia didn’t want to pay for the fruit because then, as they pointed out, it’s not waste. ‘We want to take care of the real waste’ they said. We at ICA could throw them all away but it would cost us at least EUR10 per pallet to do this so it’s a cheaper way for us just to send it to Rescued for free than to get rid of it.
    The plan that we agreed was that we would send to Rescued from our depots all the rejected, unusable fruit that we couldn’t sell in our stores. They would then process it into fruit juice, bottle and label it as ICA private label. We would buy the finished product back into our warehouse and then stock it for sale in our retail outlets.
    Having secured this deal with us Rescued were able to go to their bank and report that they had a contract with a major customer – ICA – thus securing a business loan to set up their factory and install the machinery needed to commence operations. The team behind Rescued made that happen within six months.

    ‘The business idea Rescued put on the table was that they would take all rejected fruit off our hands’

    FJF: When did the first bottles of Rescued juice start rolling off the production line?
    PH: It was June of 2016 that things began to move and we were in a position to start selling bottles of Rescued through our stores. We generated a lot of attention both in the media and with our customers due to the fact that no one had done anything like this before.
    FJF: How has the operation developed? What obstacles have you and Rescued experienced along the way and how have they been overcome?
    PH: One of the hard parts for the Rescued team is to make the operation viable where the quantities of fruits are fluctuating. To combat this as the company developed they have taken on a number of other big importers around Sweden providing them with an economy of scale which has made a big difference. Also at ICA we have run trials with some of our bigger retail outlets where they send back any waste from the stores to our warehouse and then we transport it on to them for processing.

    What we also did from the beginning was a conscious decision not to make any profit from this project. We decided that it was a great thing to be able to rescue fruit that somebody had planted and nurtured and grown from the soil and transported it across the globe only to have it rejected and on the verge of being destroyed. We all felt that this was a terrible waste, so we are doing this for a good cause.

    We made a small investment for the first year for every bottle that we sold to be able to make this work and to start in a good way. And now since the volumes have grown we have started to break even.
    Since we launched it as a private label brand it has enabled us to use internal marketing resources to tell the story about rescued fruits and promote the product in Sweden.

    Meanwhile they have also developed their own brand at Rescued which are now selling to restaurants, coffee shops and bars in Sweden. They have managed to create a really good premium label and are able to sell at premium prices in these restaurants and cafes with the result that nearly 80% of their turnover comes from their premium brand. ICA is now only a small part of their business.

    FJF: What happens when there is not enough damaged fruit in the ICA chain? Do you slow down production of the bottled juices or do you supplement it with undamaged fruit? How do you manage that situation?
    PH: We have discussed combining damaged fruit with industrial contracted fruit but we have never done it. I don’t think it’s a bad idea because in order to have an operation that’s running to save as much fruit as possible if there is 80% rescue or there is 100% or 70% it shouldn’t really matter because it’s also important that the shelves in the stores are always filled up with juice.
    If you leave an empty space on the shelves someone else will take the spot. We have not taken a decision to combine with industrial contracts yet. It could happen in the future. For now we have sold the juice in the category of fruit and vegetables. In that specific category in the stores you set something up every day and then you compare it from one day to another and decide how you will present the fruit and vegetables section. It’s not like an ordinary shelf of bottles of drink for example. We have accepted that during certain times of the year there will be a shortage due to lack of fruits.
    It is a very good thing that in the ICA stores we are able to display the fruit juices right next to the apples in the stores and this demonstrates to the consumers that ICA are very much responsible for what we do.
    Together with Truls and Cecilia we have also set up the diplomas whereby we reward the stores who are good at sending back the fruit and we can send them a diploma to pin up on the wall that says thank you for rescuing 200kg of fruit made into delicious juice. Most companies like ours always have empty space on the lorries going back to the depots as we are still transporting crates or rolling container pallets and rejected items from the stores. There is always transport for that so there isn’t any extra cost to us transporting this back to the depot – it’s just that we are filling up the trucks better.

    ‘We reward the stores who are good at sending back the fruit. We send them a diploma that says thank you for rescuing 200kg of fruit made into delicious juice’
    FJF: You say the price for these juices is higher than the standard pricing due to the more labour- intensive production methods?
    PH: Yes, that is correct. Even if the product is cheap (free in effect) you still need to collect the fruits. And when it comes into Rescued’s warehouse they need to store the fruit properly. Rescued also need to sort it before they commence juice production. For instance, they need to take away all the most damaged fruit and all the stickers on the apples – and we have a lot of stickers – and this is a process that needs more attention and involves more cost than a juice factory. And this is what makes our juice a bit more expensive when you relate it to everything else. Also, there are small things such as the handicraft of tasting the products and the mixing process to produce a delicious juice which adds to the cost. Remember, apple varieties vary and create different challenges that need to be handled by adding ginger, lemon or cinnamon to achieve perfection.
    Consumers are prepared to pay a premium price because they recognise that this is a good cause and the delicious result is worth every penny.

    ‘Consumers are prepared to pay a premium price because they recognise that this is a good cause and the delicious result is worth every penny’

    FJF: Are you considering extending this process beyond apples?
    PH: We have used pears. We started with marmalade from pears then we discovered after a while that one pear is one jar of marmalade and Swedish people don’t each much marmalade so we can’t rescue that much. We have also created a juice with pears and lemons and that works quite well. We also use different ingredients like lemons to be able to spice the juice even if its apple content of say 80% we can still use lemons and ginger and other similar ingredients. We can use different flavouring products when we have waste on those as well.
    FJF: Can you quantify how much fruit has been rescued since the initiative was introduced?
    PH: By mid-2017 after the first 12 months since launch, approximately 33,466kg of fruit has been saved from ICA’s warehouses and ICA stores corresponding to 54,336 bottles of juice. This continues to grow on a monthly basis. We look forward to hearing from companies in other countries and regions on how they might be introducing the same processes to their rejected fruit. Everybody can win from this initiative.

    Truls

    We are so proud and happy for the cooperation with ICA. We have learned a lot from each other along the way. I still remember when it all began. Now it feels surreal that that we managed to fill the first 20 000 bottles with a funnel and a measuring cup. There are a lot of new things in the pipeline and we are looking forward to rescuing more fruits and vegetables working together with ICA
    Truls Christenson, one of the initiators behind the project at Rescued.

     

    By Caroline Calder Features
  • 16 Jan
    THE DYNAMICS OF THE GLOBAL FRUIT JUICE MARKET

    THE DYNAMICS OF THE GLOBAL FRUIT JUICE MARKET

    Philip CoverdaleGlobalData recently published a report on the Dynamics of the Global Fruit Juice Market. Philip Coverdale, GlobalData’s Director of Consulting, Beverages, presented an overview of the report’s findings at the recent Juice Summit. Such was the interest in our review of the session in the November/December edition of Fruit Juice Focus that Philip has written an expanded extract for this issue. Here Philip looks at two key areas of interest – the global performance of fruit juice and nectars, and the seven top trends affecting the industry.

    At GlobalData we collect information on volumes and the markets in every single drinks and food category in 100+ countries and send out half a million surveys every year to consumers globally, checking their views on shopping habits and drivers to consumption. It is from these responses that we are able to draw on to form the basis of the trends that I am focussing on in this article. Not only to say what is going on in the market but predicting what we think is going to happen in the future.

    FRUIT JUICE AND NECTAR PERFORMANCE GLOBALLY
    Although our research is focused on the EU we have provided some context by including Fig 1 which covers all the major regions of the world. This is based on consumption per capita in 2016 on the X axis and average growth rates for the past three years on the Y axis. The size of the bubble is the volume of juice and nectars produced in that market. Any bubbles that are to the right of the chart are the higher per capita consumption markets and the opposite are the bubbles towards the left. And likewise the bubbles that are higher up the chart are those regions in growth and those low down are in decline.

    What immediately becomes apparent is that Europe and North America are quite heavily in decline, despite the fact that they are quite high per capita consumption markets. It’s the emerging markets of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the Asia Pacific (APAC) and African regions that are portraying the opposite picture and are growing extremely quickly. There are many of reasons for this, growing middle classes is one of them, an expanding economy is another. There is also the influence of changing demographics where growing migration is contributing towards growth and usage of juices and nectars in those areas. APAC being so large in physical size is quite a high volume market, but in terms of the per capita consumption it is very low.

    Therefore the opportunity for these bubbles to move to the right to get more up towards Europe is huge and if I was a juice producer I would be looking towards those emerging markets as a real opportunity for growth.

    Latin America (LATAM) is an interesting one because the slight decline in the region is primarily driven by a disastrous state of the economy and large unemployment with people choosing to trade down from drinking juices to drinking squash and powdered concentrate. Essentially the decline in Europe and North America is primarily driven by health concerns, whereas the decline in LATAM is primarily driven by the economic situation. We actually think that the prospects in juice in LATAM are looking up and are reasonable.

    In the EU our volume data shows that the market has declined by about 2.5% just between 2015/16 but the main point the research is trying to get across is that this downward trend hides the real opportunity in Europe where certain brands are doing particularly well. For example cold-pressed brands are focusing on value growth rather than volume growth. We know that consumers are drinking less but drinking better quality juice and are willing to pay more for this. Successful brands are very much aligning themselves with these changing consumer trends which I cover later in this piece.
    Nowadays if you walk into a café, maybe not a ‘greasy spoon’ but any mainstream cafe the shelves are full of cold-pressed juices and freshly squeezed juices. You wouldn’t find any from concentrate or ambient juice – and if you did you would wonder what is going on! So there is a massive change from what was common place 15 years ago. Similarly in retail, in terms of volume, 15 years ago there used to be huge consumption of juice drinks but a great deal of it was from concentrate. The ambient and from concentrate side of the market has gone down substantially and it’s now all about the Tropicana’s and the Copella’s to name just two brands as examples.

    I like to draw the comparison between old juice and new juice. When you look at shelves 15 to 20 years ago it was old juice, it was rectangular packs of basic juice, and now you look at the shelves and it’s beautiful packaging, it’s delicious juice. Another point to mention is one of the reasons why I think there’s a decline in Europe is changing consumption occasions. I look at my own situation where 10 years ago breakfast was a real occasion and we used to sit down as a family and everyone would have their cereals and everybody would have a glass of orange juice with their cereals. Now everyone is in such a mad rush and a lot of people are consuming breakfast on the go that the family breakfast occasion with people drinking juice is much less than it used to be and I think that is very much contributing to juice declines.

    Fig 2 really just reiterates the point. I have looked at the stats for chilled versus ambient fruit juice in the EU and you will see that for ambient the five-year average decline is 4.3% and that decline has stayed the same between 2015/16 at about 4.3%. But if you look at chilled the opposite is happening. The five year growth is 1.6% but interestingly if you look at the growth between 2015/16 there is a 4.8% increase which in a quite a high per capita region is actually quite substantial. Something has really happened over the past couple of years which is really driving this chilled juice area of the market. Perhaps it is because the economies are generally picking up in Europe. A similar scenario is from concentrate versus not from concentrate. It’s the identical picture. With from concentrate juice going down by over 5% over the last five years, average per year, and not from concentrate 3.3% average growth for the last five years and that has picked up dramatically between 2015/16 at 5.3%.

    To bring the previous figs to life I have included fig 3 which looks at a couple of important juice markets in Europe – France and the UK – where if you look at discount volumes (discount is where if 100% is the benchmark for the bestselling brand and pack size produced, then an index below 80 is what we class as discount and an index of over 120 is what we class as premium) you see premium in both France and the UK is growing massively, mainstream is fairly stagnant and discount is going down substantially – especially in the UK.

    In my view the key point to take away from this data is that despite that initial chart showing that Europe is in decline, the premium end of the price spectrum is growing strongly and juice producers need to be looking at aligning their product portfolios with this more premium end of the market. In some cases I think they are getting the message. In the UK they definitely are but if you look at a market like Germany this is not necessarily so. Much of the juice that you get in Germany is still old juice.
    So how does the future look? Essentially if you look at it in volume terms (see fig 4) the declines that we have seen over the past five years we think are going to slow down slightly over the next five years but still remain in decline, with nectars declining more so than 100% fruit juice. But if you look in value terms, the decline is that much less and if you look at what we are forecasting in the grand scheme of things it is actually not too bad so we think that in value terms in Europe, juice and nectar producers are going to manage to more or less hold their own.

    THE SEVEN TOP TRENDS IMPACTING THE INDUSTRY
    At GlobalData we track over 100 trends and sub trends of what is going on in the market and these are just seven of those trends which we believe that juice producers and juice brands should be taking note of in order to align more with that premium value growth opportunity.
    The first one is Healthy Hydration. Everyone has been talking about healthy hydration for a while but the fact of the matter is the primary driver in Europe for the decline in juice is because of increased health awareness. Juice has received some bad press on how much sugar it contains and people have massively reduced their juice intake. We know that health is a key driver in soft drinks purchasing decisions and ‘better for you’ is really transitioned from a kind of nice to have to a necessity. But a key point here is that juice has a whole range of attributes that consumers associate with health. High in vitamins, high in antioxidants. Functionality – it’s natural, it’s fresh, raw. It’s only got really one ingredient -the fruit – and if it’s organic that’s even better. All of these attributes consumers view as healthy.

    It’s a shame that sugar has been the one that has come to the fore but actually there is a lot that juice produces can be doing to counteract this and I think that by producing premium juices using some of these terms it almost trumps and offsets the anti-sugar sentiment. When you go into a Pret a Manger sandwich bar in the UK and you see a beautiful cold-pressed apple and beetroot you don’t really think about the sugar you think about how good it is for you. Forget the whole ‘lower in sugar’ angle on the packaging that has gone before – it is better to focus on the positive side to juice using terms such as raw, pure and clean. Those three words from our surveys really resonate with the consumers, they love the whole raw thing – clean living! I think focusing on the nutritional benefits of fruit juice and developing functional and enhanced juices highlighting the vitamins nutrients and benefits is absolutely key.
    The second trend is Gut Happy which is basically digestive health. Although this may appear to be quite niche, if you actually look down the supermarket aisles they are increasingly full of products that aid digestion.

    From our 500,000 surveys every year we know that digestive health is the third most desired health benefit in food and drink with the number one and number two positions taken up by generic terms like health and wellbeing. Digestive health is one of the most sought-after benefits in the product.
    76% of consumers in our surveys find the claim ‘good for digestion and gut health’ appealing in food and drink products. An example of a product demonstrating this that is now becoming mainstream is Kefir. You only have to go into some of the major supermarkets in the UK and there is Kefir everywhere. Similarly if you go into an outlet such as Leon you have got Kombucha on the menu which is just amazing.

    It has always been massive in America and is slowly infiltrating the market in Europe.
    The third trend is the Adultification of soft drinks. We know there is massive rise in alcohol avoidance and that is definitely driving demand for more sophisticated adult soft drinks and these are consumed at the occasions where you would typically drink alcohol – in the pub, at home or when you get back from work. We know that over 20% of every age bracket except the over 65’s are actively trying to reduce alcohol consumption and in the UK over 27% of the millennial age bracket now don’t drink alcohol. Which go back 20 years if you’re at university, and you didn’t drink alcohol everybody would think you were a bit weird.

    An increasing number of the soft drink producers are creating these more adult soft drinks and also many of the alcohol companies are producing either no alcohol versions of their beer like Heineken’s zero zero beer. Big alcohol companies are looking to launch soft drinks within the adult space. They see this rising lack of millennial drinking as a real threat to the industry so the point here is that juice producers need to be considering pack design that positions juice as a credible alcohol alternative and currently they just don’t. You would not go into a pub or bar and order a bottle of Tropicana!
    Using sophisticated and experimental flavours is one of our main tips here. Emphasising the quality of the ingredients provenance, authentic production methods and heritage – craft drinks essentially – I think will work well for juice.

    Cold is Hot is the fourth trend. I didn’t want to concentrate on just cold-pressed juice. I also wanted to touch on the actual term cold because we know from our consumer surveys the term cold addresses this real desire for a cleaner diet and using the word cold is a real consumer friendly way to express that whole clean label concept. And we know that the word cold generates these feelings of freshness natural and raw which work well for juice companies. Where consumers may have negative health perceptions of juice, cold-pressed juice evokes a reaction which overcomes this.

    The industry buzzwords which are on trend and which the cold concept taps into are Raw, Fresh, Natural, Real and Pure. You can see this reflected in other consumer products with cold brew coffee, cold brew tea and you are even seeing water with added cold-pressed juice. The brands are increasingly looking to introduce the word cold into their marketing and on-pack messaging and the consumers are snapping it up.

    Savoury and Spice. This is the fifth trend and I think it fits into both healthy hydration and the adultification of soft drinks. We know that savoury and spicy flavours are really appealing to consumers. We know that consumers, especially younger consumers, are willing to experiment with exciting flavours, but they are also looking for the health angle. In our global survey 80% of consumers think that ginger has a positive impact on health, with 66% thinking the same for cinnamon and 56% for turmeric. Just three ingredients picked out of an extensive list. Consumers are really valuing those ingredients and as a result we are probably going to see quite a big increase in the number of ginger flavoured juices for example. We know that all the big soft drink companies are looking at how they can introduce ginger into their products.

    Next trend – six – is Plant Power. There seems to be this healthy halo associated with plants and botanicals and we are seeing a great many soft drinks companies introducing botanicals into their ranges. From our surveys in 2015 consumers are telling us that they think botanicals and plant extract have an impact on health – 63% was the global average which is notably high. The implications for juice companies – obviously juice comes from a plant – is that they should be capitalising on the naturally functional properties of botanicals and plants by promoting this on-pack.

    The seventh and final trend is Beautiful Packaging. As mentioned earlier, in Europe you go into a cafe and the shelves are full of beautifully packaged juices. You cannot release a premium juice without putting it in something that looks pretty good. One of the really big points here is the rise of online and how shoppers scan through everything online when they’re doing their Internet shopping. They pause for a split second to look at a picture and if it doesn’t reach out and grab them they are just going to move onto the next one. The importance of beautiful packaging and imagery that kind of fits with this increasingly visual society in which we live in, is hugely important.

    To summarise – if you look at the global level, Europe and North America are still in decline, emerging markets such as MENA and APAC are the fastest-growing markets and offer the greatest opportunity, and although in Europe fruit juice and nectars volumes are declining – value remains fairly strong and this really points to premiumisation in the market.
    Out of these seven trends that are covered in this article I think I would distil it down to two major areas. The first is premiumisation – which is high-quality ingredients, better processing techniques, interesting provenance, heritage, beautiful packaging and so on. And the second one is tactics to counter negative health perceptions – such as healthy hydration, promoting digestion, using savoury, spicy, botanical ingredients and trying to cater for alcohol avoiders.

    GlobalData is now one of the world’s largest consumer research, market intelligence companies specialising in strategy and consultancy work for fruit juice brands. They work closely with all the major drinks brands, retailers and food service suppliers around the world along with ingredients suppliers and packaging and equipment manufacturers. GlobalData work with companies such as McKinsey and Bain on specialist consultancy projects and worked with the AIJN to produce the 2017 European Fruit Juice Market Report.
    Philip Coverdale moved across to GlobalData with Canadean, the drinks industry specialist research and data agency, when the company was amalgamated into GlobalData along with 20 other separate market research agencies
    Philip Coverdale can be reached on Philip.coverdale@globaldata.com. 0044 7734 324198. Skype: philipcoverdale

    By Caroline Calder Features
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