Making Passion Fruit Juice | africaJUICE

How We Made it Africa reports:

africaJUICE was started as a result of global supply problems in passion fruit production. O’Halloran says that globally passion fruit suffers from boom-bust cycles. Most growers are not involved in the processing. When prices for passion fruit go too low because of over-planting, growers simply stop planting, which causes a shortage of supply and prices to rise again. “Imagine if you are a fruit juice manufacturer and you don’t know whether your passion fruit concentrate is going to cost US$3,000 a ton or $14,000 a ton. You are going to be reluctant to commit to passion fruit as part of your blends,” explains O’Halloran. africaJUICE rehabilitated and expanded an existing fruit farm in Ethiopia and constructed a new processing facility that enables the company to supply fruit juice to Europe, the Middle East as well as serve the growing local market. “We want to move away from this boom-bust cycle by being involved in the growing as well as the processing of fruit. We are one of the few players in the world that can enter into long-term supply agreements with the main traders, blenders of juice and finished product manufacturers.”