Israel's Better Juice and Brazil's Citrosuco are teaming up to set up a pilot plant to reduce sugars in orange juice. Headquartered in Sao Paulo, Citrosuco is providing some of the funding plus technical and operational expertise and the Ashdod-based food tech start-up will develop the technology.
Fruit juices contain vitamins, minerals, and many other beneficial nutrients, but this natural drink comes with three types of sugars.
Eran Blachinsky, PhD, founder and CEO of Better Juice, explained: "Our device uses non-GMO micro-organisms to convert the sugars and provides orange juice manufactures a ready opportunity to meet the trends and claims for reduced sugars, all while keeping the juicy flavour of the beverage."
Blachinsky pointed out that the global orange juices market is valued at dozens of billions of US dollars with outstanding potential to create better-for-you orange juice beverages.
"We have been seeking an orange juice sugar reduction technology for some time,” said Alex Marie Schuermans, Product Development and Applications General Manager of Citrosuco.
“Better Juice’s solution holds a lot of promise and we are confident that by combining their technology with our know-how, we can accelerate production of the first sugar-reduced orange juice,” he added.
Proprietary technology
“This collaboration with Citrosuco is a vote of confidence in Better Juice’s leading technology and its capabilities for reducing sugar in orange juice,” said Blachinsky. “We’re excited to work with this strategic partner and help create juices with low sugar — the latest frontier in sugar reduction.”
Blachinsky explained that Better Juice's proprietary technology can be tuned to reduce between 30% to 80% of all the sugars in orange juice. “Making it easy conform to the minimum 25% reduction required by the FDA, as well as the 30% reduction required by the EFSA for allowable claims of ‘reduced sugar’ in food and beverage products," he said.
Better Juice won the “Most Innovative Technology” award at the 2018 Startup Innovation Challenge at Health ingredients Europe in Frankfurt, Germany, for its sugar reduction technology, which it developed in conjunction with The Hebrew University in Rehovot, Israel, and The Kitchen Hub incubator, Ashdod, Israel.