Doehler, a global producer, marketer and provider of technology-driven natural ingredients, ingredient systems and integrated solutions for the food, beverage and lifescience & nutrition industry strengthens its portfolio in red fruit and vegetable ingredients and extends its market presence in the USA and Asia with the acquisition of SVZ.

Doehler, a global producer, marketer and provider of technology-driven natural ingredients, ingredient systems and integrated solutions announces the acquisition of SVZ, subject to regulatory approval. This strengthens Doehler’s portfolio of natural red fruit and vegetable ingredients and its global market presence, expanding the operations in the USA and Japan.

SVZ is known for its high-quality purees, concentrates and ingredients of sustainably sourced vegetables and red berries. With production sites in the USA, Spain, Poland and Belgium, SVZ has established a strong global presence and successfully built a base of premium customers in the food, beverage and lifescience & nutrition industry. SVZ’s experience and operational excellence perfectly complements Doehler’s sourcing, production and supply chain capabilities. With this acquisition, customers will benefit from an even broader ingredient portfolio and larger raw material base.

Consumers’ interest in healthier nutrition creates a rising demand for ingredients that offer better nutritional value and superior sensory experiences from sustainable raw materials. SVZ’s portfolio contributes to this trend by offering a variety of low-calorie, high-fiber and nutrient-rich fruit and vegetable ingredients that enhances the overall nutritional content of food and beverages. SVZ’s products seamlessly integrate with Doehler’s portfolio of natural ingredients and ingredient systems.

About SVZ
SVZ supplies high quality fruit and vegetable ingredients to food and drink manufacturers around the world. Its long heritage in agricultural supply and accredited sustainability initiatives ensure a consistent, premium quality ingredient supply. With more than 100 years’ experience in the global fruit and vegetable agribusiness, SVZ represents quality leadership throughout the whole supply chain. Headquartered in Breda, SVZ has state-of-the-art production facilities in Belgium, Poland, Spain and the US, where it has built strong partnerships with local growers to ensure fruit and vegetables are cultivated, harvested and processed to the highest standards.  Strategically positioned at the heart of the fruit and vegetable supply chain, SVZ is committed to enacting positive, sustainable change in the fruit and vegetable ingredient industry by Growing better, together.

Sponsored Post – The South Tyrolean fruit processing company VOG Products has come up with new organic products, for example Demeter-certified juices and purées. Quality is also guaranteed by the source, because the raw products originate solely from the company’s own members.

When consumers are looking for safe, monitored and healthy food, they like to buy organic products. This is also reflected in cultivation: for example, Assomela, the association of Italian apple producers, is forecasting record organic production in Italy this year – 197,402 tonnes and an increase of 4 per cent compared to 2021. The same is true for VOG Products: here, the quantities of organic raw products delivered have doubled in the last three years.

VOG Products is a trend-setter on the organic market and has continuously been expanding the organic range: along with juices, concentrates and purées, – also available in practical small-format packaging such as the “Bag-in-Box” – the South Tyrolean organisation of producers also offers organic-quality frozen fruits, cut and canned fruits.

Compliance with the highest organic quality standard is always guaranteed: following the Bioland partnership and the certification obtained last year from Bio Suisse, the largest organic organisation in Switzerland, VOG Products has recently also become Demeter-certified. Demeter is the oldest organic association in Germany, whose criteria for food processing go far beyond the requirements of the EU Regulation on Organic Farming.

Origin as an additional guarantee of safety

“Our organic range is diverse – but one thing always remains the same: every product and every package contains our expertise in the organic sector, which has grown over the years,” emphasises Christoph Tappeiner, CEO of VOG Products. “We source our organic raw materials solely from our members in South Tyrol and Trentino. With traceability back to the origin and close monitoring along the entire production chain, we meet the highest safety and quality standards, something that customers and consumers in the organic sector value greatly”, says Tappeiner.

In addition, the sun-drenched hills are an ideal location for the best organic apples. The raw materials come from within a radius of no more than 70 kilometres. The producers are organic farmers by conviction and manage the mostly small family farms close to nature and with a lot of heart. VOG Products is closely linked to the producers, especially since the fruit processing company based in Laives is owned by three organisations of producers from South Tyrol and Trentino and 18 South Tyrolean cooperatives. On this basis there are around 6,000 families of fruit growers, many of whom recognised early on the enormous potential of organic cultivation.

South Tyrol does, in fact, play a leading role in the organic sector at European level: organisations of producers based in the region and VOG Products members VIP and VOG are the largest producers of organic apples in Europe. What is significant is that almost every fourth organic apple in the EU comes from South Tyrol.

Use of polyphenols in the analysis of fruit and vegetable juices and purées

Anthocyanins and flavanone glucosides have been used for years as part of the authenticity assessment of red/black and citrus juices, typically using IFU 71 & 58 respectively. These components comprise only a small selection of the polyphenolic compounds that are available to the analyst for the assessment of juices. The generalised use of polyphenolic compounds as a means of detecting mixtures of juice was developed by Wade’s group at Procter and Gamble in the late 80’s. This procedure works well in juices where there is a reducing environment, such as citrus juices, and produces stable peak profiles. However, in systems with active polyphenol oxidase (PPO) enzymes, such as apple, pear and bananas, some peaks can be lost, due to oxidation and subsequent polymerisation, so these profiles tend to be less stable.

Unlike the chromatograms seen with the anthocyanin procedure, which often only contain a few peaks , traces for the polyphenols are much more complex and generally contain many more peaks. Due to the complex nature of these chromatograms, it is generally impossible to use reference libraries for positive peak identification due to small shifts in retention times between chromatographic runs. This means that control samples should be run with each batch of test samples for comparison purposes unless positive identifications can be made by using more specific detectors, such as diode array (DAD) and/or ideally mass spectrometer (MS), where a positive identification can be made either from an accurate mass measurement or by specific “mother/daughter” transitions.

This recommendation has been published and is available via the IFU website under Methods of Analysis

thyssenkrupp is investing in the safety of fresh food products by building Germany’s biggest center for high-pressure processing of food in the town of Quakenbrück, Lower Saxony. Construction of the center in Quakenbrück’s business and innovation park will commence in early 2020. From the start of 2021, up to 26 metric tons of food products daily will undergo gentle and reliable preservation at the roughly 630 m2 facility, which is being built at a cost of around 3 million euros.

Nowadays, more and more people attach importance to a healthy diet with fresh, natural produce. Using thyssenkrupp’s high-pressure pasteurization (HPP) process, food can be preserved gently without the need for heat or chemical additives. High pressures of up to 6,000 bar eliminate contaminants such as pathogens, fungi and yeasts, significantly slowing and in some cases even preventing decay while retaining valuable ingredients.

Christian Myland, CEO of Uhde High Pressure Technologies: “Quakenbrück is one of the most important research and technology centers for the German food industry, making it the ideal location for our project. In the future, food manufacturers will be able to come to our service center to see the advantages of high-pressure processing for themselves. HPP technology will help them serve the rising demand for natural, additive-free products.”

The new service center will be able to process a wide range of food products including juices, purees, dairy products, meats, seafoods and many more. It will be built in the direct vicinity of the German Institute of Food Technologies (DIL), with which thyssenkrupp cooperates on research and development. The DIL is one of Europe’s leading food industry research and development facilities. Cooperation will focus among other things on microbiological testing and the development of completely new long-lasting, clean and wholesome food products based on HPP technology.

Döhler Group and Zumos Catalano Aragoneses S.A. (ZUCASA) have reached an agreement on the acquisition of the majority of shares in ZUCASA by the Döhler Group. With immediate effect, Döhler will manage ZUCASA’s juice production facility located in the Huesca region through its subsidiary Döhler Fraga S.L.

For Döhler, this transaction marks another great step forward in one of Europe’s largest fruit production areas. Customers will benefit from a more diverse offering in the stone fruits segment as well as in apples and pears; furthermore, the combined businesses will offer greater efficiency in a global market with regard to customised all-in-one solutions.

ZUCASA’s extensive expertise and ability to provide fruit and vegetable juices, purees and concentrates for food and beverages, combined with the broad product portfolio and the comprehensive industry knowledge of the Döhler Group, will create unique synergy effects. In the coming years, Döhler Group aims to set a benchmark within the sector and develop a plan of expansion and sustainable growth within its business model.

About ZUCASA:

Zumos Catalano Aragoneses S.A. is a producer of juices, purees and sweet fruit concentrates, vegetables and plants located in the region of Fraga (Huesca), with operations at the heart of Spain’s largest production area of sweet fruit between Huesca and Lleida. It has facilities spanning more than 24,000 m2 over an area of 168,000 m2, with capacity to store 32,000 m3 of natural fruit juices, purees and concentrates. ZUCASA began production in 2010 with three lines for processing fruits and vegetables: two of which for purees and a third for juices. Currently, it employs an average of 50 workers on permanent contracts, reaching 150 workers during high season. The company’s commitment to quality in production has been confirmed by the international certifications BRC, IFS, SGF, Kosher, FDA and others, which in turn have enabled it to expand internationally, with more than 60 % of revenues coming from exports.

Determination of Acetic Acid (enzymatic method)

This method has been revised and has been loaded onto the IFU website. It now includes precision data.

General information

This method serves to determine the acetic acid content of a fruit and vegetable juices & purees. Provided that it meets characteristic performance, this enzymatic method can also be carried out using an automatic analyser.

Principle

Acetic acid (acetate) is converted in the presence of the enzyme acetyl-CoA synthetase (ACS) with adenosine-5′-triphosphate (ATP) and coenzyme A (CoA) to acetyl-CoA.

Acetyl-CoA reacts with oxaloacetate to citrate in the presence of citrate synthase (CS).

The oxaloacetate required for reaction (2) is formed from malate and nicotinamideadenine dinucleotide (NAD) in the presence of malate dehydrogenase (MDH) (3). In this reaction NAD is reduced to NADH.

The determination is based on the formation of NADH which is measured by the increase in absorbance at 340, 334 or 365 nm. Since a preceding indicator reaction is used, the amount of NADH formed is not linearly proportional to the acetic acid concentration.

The IFU Technical Workshop this year was held by the Rhine in the famous cathedral city of Cologne (Germany), which is also well known for its trade fairs. The date and location were chosen so the workshop could be held just before the Anuga Tec fair to which complimentary access was granted for all workshop participants. Anuga Tec is a leading global food fair where industry provides innovations and technological visions attracting 50,000 visitors from 152 countries.

Dirk Lansbergen, IFU President and Citrosuco, welcomed an International audience from not only Germany, but also Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the UK. GfL were thanked for their sponsorship of the networking evening, SIG for providing the water plus Valensina and Rabenhorst for a quality selection of juices and smoothies.

The workshop opened with two contrasting presentations on organic and conventional agriculture. Boris Voelkel is the 4th generation family member of an organic juice company – Voelkel. With such a strong organic tradition and expertise Boris gave a passionate case for supporting organic products explaining how increasing consumer driven demand will make a great contribution to a sustainable future. The integrated farm assurance scheme of Global Gap was then described by Tanja Schmidt of Global Gap. It is the international standard leading to certification. The risk based critical control points and compliance criteria were shown which if applied provides a good system for the use and management of crop treatments.

Vegetable juices and purees are becoming popular, both as a product on their own or blended with other fruit juices. Mia Schellekens of SVZ explained these trends with some newly launched product examples and then followed on with an explanation of the vegetable puree and juice manufacturing process highlighting the technological challenges faced and how they are addressed.

Rheology is the science of deformation and flow of matter. This is important to the juice industry as viscosity affects product flow through equipment, heat transfer and organoleptic experience. Dr. Antonio Trifiro from the Stazione Sperimentale Parma gave the workshop a thorough understanding of the science including factors affecting rheology and measurement.

The traditional technique used to assess the soundness of tomatoes used to make tomato juices and pastes is the Howard Mould Count. Dr. Achim Gessler of rhia-Wessergold showed that the measurement of ergosterol is a new alternative application that has been incorporated into the AIJN Code of Practice and an IFU Method of Analysis has also been published. Isotopic determination can be used to detect added sugar in juices and added water in NFC juices. These principles were explained by Dr. Ana Cabanero Ortiz from the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and data on the isotopic measurement of water in Spanish NFC juices were shared with the audience. Continuing with the analytical theme Dr. Detlef Jensen of Thermo Fisher Scientific provided information how ion chromatography can be used for the analysis of juices. It is particularly useful for the detection and measurement of anions, organic acids, cations, amines and carbohydrates. Systems and chromatograms were shown.

The IFU microbiological working group has been developing a revised method for the detection of alicyclobacillus sp. The changes were reviewed, the validation process outlined, and initial results presented by Barbara Gerten from Merck and Antonino Deban Valles formerly from Neogen Europe. The data validation data looks good, but the experts prefer to wait until July before publishing the final version of the method.

Markus Jungen of the SGF returned to the theme of risk-based quality management in the global juice industry and how the SGF is fighting food fraud. He showed how SGF can support company’s food fraud vulnerability assessment and control program. Extensive data was shared summarising the samples taken for analysis and the results obtained.

Oxygen has a significant affect on the shelf life of oxygen sensitive products in aseptic cartons. Sonja Bischoff from SIG explained oxygen tolerance testing and how it can be used in shelf life determination. Orange juice quality parameter data over the products shelf life data was shared for a range of different quality parameter highlighting how the test can be applied.

Biofortification has been a topic of discussion at codex recently. Dr. Gordon McDougall of the James Hutton Institute gave the concluding workshop presentation on the health benefits of berries: Enhancing bioactive content in fruit juices. The health benefits of a range of berries from their polyphenol content were shown. Genetic/genomic advances have produced markers for the accelerated breeding of new varieties with enhanced polyphenol content.
The workshop concluded with special thanks to the Aintzane Esturo of SGF for their contribution to organising the event.

A casual networking evening took place at the Hoelnerstall near the city centre. Many glasses of Kölsch were enjoyed and a special presentation was made to Prof. Helmut Dietrich who retired as Chair of the Science and Technology Commission. He was thanked for his dedicated work for the IFU, though we are pleased that he will continue to participate in future commission meetings.

A technical tour was again organised the following day. The first stop was at the well renowned Rabenhorst juice company, which is over 200 hundred years old. The group were able to see at first-hand how juices are processed, bottled and packaged as well as sampling and enjoying their range of healthy juice products.

Afterwards the SIG Combibloc kindly provided a buffet lunch before showing how juice cartons are printed and laminated along with a demonstration of filling equipment that utilises the packaging format. One satisfied participant commented “It was a very informative tour conducted by passionate employees of SIG Combibloc who were very knowledgeable about their products and applications”.

Post workshop survey.

Once again, we received very favourable feedback through the survey monkey and some great ideas for future workshop topics. All those who completed the survey were entered in a draw for a free 2019 workshop ticket. The winner was Yuval Ghendler, congratulations Yuval!

For the 8th consequtive year already, the AIM took place from 9th-11th April 2018 at Dubai World Trade Center and is considered to be the leading interntaional direct investors meeting. More then 100 influencial and innovative experts participated at the conference to learn and discuss about the trends and innvocation of direct investments as a tool to guarantuee longterm competitiveness. The Conference was initiated and established by the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Economics to secure and promote innovative and direct investments longterm.

Claudia Lauener and Frank Hofer, nomenees and representatives of swiss-based Frutco AG, were proudly handed over the AIM Runner-up Investment Award 2018 for the best direct investment in Latinamerica, supported by nicaraguan ambassador Mohamed Lashtar.

The 20 Million Dollar project CHIMACO AG (farms) and Frutco de Las Americas SA (processing) has become an epicenter of sustainability for trainings, education and farming in regards of Maracuya. CHIMACO stands for Chinandega Maracuya Company and employs more then 100 people.

Frutco AG and CHIMACO currently produce on 200 hectares of farmland. As soon as the processing plant of Frutco de Las Americas SA, a joint-venture of Swiss based CT Finance AG and Nicaragua based Grupo Coen will be ready for production, additional independent producers for Maracuya, Guava and Bananas will join the project with a production plan of more then 1.500 hectares, ready to produce purees, concenrates and juices. Grupo Coen will dedicate 2.000 hectares of extra land to the project. In addition to that, enough land can be added for portential future projects.

New IFU Recommendation (#13)

The IFU methods of analysis commission has approved a new recommendation, authored by Dr. David Hammond, on the use of DNA methods for the authenticity analysis of juices.

The juice analyst has a number of conventional methods available to check if a product has been prepared from a mixture of fruits. These include the use of HPLC for the pattern of anthocyanins in red/black juices (IFU 71, flavonoid glucosides in citrus juices (IFU 58), or generalised polyphenol screening (IFU Rec. 11). With the introduction of the 1H-NMR profiling method a few years ago this has offered another rapid and modern approach to look for mixtures of fruits.

Procedures to check for the presence of one fruit in another often target a specific component that would not normally be seen in the labelled fruit. Typical examples of this would be sorbitol (IFU 79), to check for apple and/or pear addition in a non-sorbitol containing fruit, such as strawberry or raspberry, or tartaric acid (IFU 65) for grape addition to another juice. Although these markers provide very good approaches for these specific types of addition they do not answer all questions, which means that there is still a need to develop more specific procedures for other fruits.

Nature has provided us with perhaps the ultimate marker for a particular fruit species, its DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). An early and on-going major application of DNA based analysis is in criminal investigations. This was introduced around 30 years ago and has been significantly developed and improved over the intervening period.

This new recommendation gives an up to date overview of the analysis and how it can be applied to the field of authenticity.

SVZ, a leading supplier of premium fruit and vegetable ingredients, is celebrating 150 years of expertise at this year’s Fi Europe. The company will be showcasing its premium portfolio of high-quality, natural fruit and vegetable purees, juices and concentrates.

SVZ’s wide range of ingredients, from raspberry and strawberry purees to spinach and carrot concentrates, is cultivated in the world’s finest growing regions for a variety of applications, from beverages and baby food to dairy products and baked goods. Visitors to the stand can sample SVZ’s natural and nutritious ingredients, either on their own or in the form of a specially-made cocktail, while accessing the agro supply chain, sustainability and applications knowledge of the SVZ experts.

An increasing number of consumers demand healthy and clean label products that are traceable too. “At FiE 2017 we will not only be discussing our passion for and dedication to premium fruit and vegetable ingredients and our long-standing sustainability credentials, but also how our portfolio and expertise can help food and beverage manufacturers today. From clean label, natural and minimally processed to healthy and reduced sugar, consumers have more demands than ever before and we are well-placed to help our customers meet these needs with innovative, natural formulations.” explains Johan Cerstiaens, Sales Director at SVZ.

SVZ, stand 08.0L50, Fi Europe, 28-30 November 2017, Frankfurt, Germany