The new Preshafruit® juice range demonstrates outstanding innovation through its PET bottle design and production processes, while being able to deliver significant nutritional benefits in comparison with pasteurised juice products.
The range of 100% juices is the brainchild of Melbourne’s Donny Boy Fresh Food Company, with the unique wedge-shaped 350ml PET bottle designed and made by leading packaging solutions provider VIP Packaging.
Preshafruit juices are pressurised cold (not heat pasteurised like most other juices) using a revolutionary technique called high-pressure processing (HPP). Andrew Gibb, the MD of Donny Boy Fresh Food Company, explains that the fruit is pressurised at approximately 6,000 times the atmospheric pressure found at sea level. Gibb explains to VIP Packaging that this pressure is intended to kill the bacteria, yeasts and moulds found in food without affecting its nutritional value, flavour, colour or aroma, and to also extend its shelf life. As a result of this, Gibb says that Preshafruit juices deliver a ‘just picked taste’ with an increased anti-oxidant and vitamin value when compared with juices made from traditional pasteurising techniques which use heat.
In order to maximise the yield from the HPP machine’s pressure vessel, the Preshafruit manufacturing process required a unique bottle design. Daryl Black, PET business manager for VIP Packaging, says a number of design options were explored with the best solution coming from a triangular bottle. As a result, this created a unique packaging and merchandising opportunity with no other juice product in the market bottled in this kind of shape.
Made on conventional two-stage PET equipment using conventional PET performs, Black says processing parameters were developed to allow for production of the unique triangular shape.
The Preshafruit juices were developed with the assistance of scientists from Food Science Australia, a division of CSIRO. Donny Boy Fresh Food Company is the first company in Australia to use HPP, not heat pasteurisation, to create its fruit juices and is the first company in the world to make single variety juices such as Granny Smith and Pink Lady Apple, using this method of production.