Frontline Food Consultants and Engineers provide the best beverage consultancy solutions for the manufacturing and production of fruit squashes.  Our F&B consultancy for fruit squashes helps you to increase the consistency, flavor & shelf life of your products. We offer – Recipe Development and Process Optimisation which plays an important role in your success of creating fruity, beautifully colored fruit squashes that have lovely silky textures. Here much emphasis is laid on extraction, blending and pasteurizing in order to ensure that when final fruit squashes get to market. They are good tasting and nutritious naturally and also in line with the market trends where beverages should be more refreshing and easier to prepare.

Our services include Ingredient Sourcing & Sustainability Consulting, so that we result in offering fresh and premium quality fruits/organic products. It is also within our purview to assist in developing new products depending on your preferences it may be low sugar vitamin enhanced fruit squashes. We also have Regulatory Compliance Consulting through which your fruit squashes can be checked for compliance to food safety and proper labeling. Our Packaging Solutions come in, protection of freshness, enhanced ‘shelf life’, eco-conscious packages that consumers can relate to.

What are Fruit Squashes?

Fruit Squashes are ready-to-drink fruit products generally consumed after adding water to the contents of the squashes. These beverages are made by extracting the juice or pulp and then adding sugar, water, and preservatives which results to a concentration of the product. This concentrated can be added to water or soda which makes any food well seasoned and consumers can have a healthy drink. People like fruit squashes because they can be preserved for some time longer, they occupy little space during storage, and are easily available at all times. Fruit squashes are produced from healthy, ripened fruits through a process that involves crushing the fruits then separating the juice or pulp then concentrating. This is followed by adding of sugar and preservatives, bailing, and then packing in air-tight bottles and jars.

Fruit squashes require some specific equipment; for instance, pulping machines are used to isolate the juice and pulp from the fruits besides the seeds and skins. Copper tanks are used to store the fruit concentrates and the preparation of the fruit product is also done in these tanks so as to ensure all the preparations are of equal quality. The pasteurers are usually installed to heat the product in order to remove bacteria that may cause the spoilage of the product. The filled and sealed machines that put the squash in bottles or some other convenient container make sure to close the container tightly so as to preserve freshness. Barton also utilizes labeling machines to guarantee that the final product has the correct label and that meets total regulatory demands of the body while quality control helps in ascertaining uniformity in aspects of taste, color, and safety of the product.

Types of Fruit Squashes

  • Citrus Squashes: This by-product is primarily produced from oranges, lemons and limes and other citrus fruits. More accredited to their clean and sharp taste.
  • Berry Squashes: Adding strawberries, blueberries and raspberries as these are sweet and have a slightly sour taste.
  • Tropical Squashes: From mangos, pineapple, passion fruit and therefore they are exotic, sweet and aromatically tasty fruits.
  • Mixed Fruit Squashes: A mixture of the juice of apple pear with citric acid to create a medium-filtered, sweet-sour Refresher.

Manufacturing of Fruit Squashes

  1. Choosing the Fruits and Cuts
  • Fruit Washing and Sorting: Such fruits have to be washed well to wash off the surface which has got dirt, pesticide and other contaminants. Mechanical sorting system ensures only top quality fruits are sorted because only perfect fruits can be sorted out.
  • Pulping/Extraction: In withdrawing the juice or pulp, preparations such as squashing and maceration of the fruit is employed. This step depends with the type apricots for instance are crushed while oranges are pressed softly.
  • Clarification: In some occasions the juice is treated or filtered from some of the particulate and any other solid which may obscure the clarity of the final product. This is done by filtration or centrifugation Filtration is a process of passing fluid containing high density of particles in the liquid through a filter.
  1. Concentration and Blending
  • Concentration: Any pulp or juice that is extracted is then concentrated by reducing its water content, whereby heating the extracted juice to the necessary temperature range of 50-60 ◦ C (with pressure when necessary) to produce evaporated juice or pulp. This is good and at the same time efficacious in retaining the flavors, while at the same time, the amount of water to be added is also adjusted.
  • Blending: The concentrated juice is mixed later with water, sugar, and preservatives. This will be taken alongside other supplements including, sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate that help in preventing fruit spoiled condition.
  • Flavoring: Flavors can be natural or artificial, they are used to enhance the taste of the product or to bring the same taste around different batches.
  1. Pasteurization
  • Heat Treatment: Since fruit squash needs to be pasteurized to improve its safety standards and durability, it has to pass through heat of 85-95°C for 30 seconds to one minute. This do not affect the taste and nutritional value of the produce while eradicating destructive small organisms on it.
  • Cooling: It is then cooked for a brief time, immediately this is done the squash is cooled in order to minimize the loss of as much of its taste and texture as possible.
  1. Packaging
  • Filling and Sealing: The fruit squash concentrate product is packed in glass or PET bottles for secondary packaging in sizes of 500 ml to size of 2 litres. The bottles can be covered using heat sealed caps or screw caps.
  • Nitrogen Flushing: Occasionally, nitrogen is used to expel the oxygen in the container, and to reduce the outside possibility of oxidation that may affect spoilage of the colour and taste of the item.

Development of packaging materials for fruit squashes

  1. PET Bottles
  • Objective: Provide slender and fracture resistant packaging solutions which serve functions in handling and storage.
  • Materials: PET (polyethylene terephthalate) because of its reusability, and long-lasting mother nature.
  • Benefits: PET bottles are very flexible, completely clear so that theconsumer can see the product, suitable for storage which helps to sustain product freshness and contained leakage.
  1. Glass Bottles
  • Objective: To enhance the taste and quality of the fruit squash while coming up with a luxurious look at the end product.
  • Materials: Float glass which is considered standard and is mainly used for premium products.
  • Benefits: Generally, barrier properties of glass are extremely flattering, owing to a hardly penetrable barrier to oxygen and moisture, which guarantees the correct product freshness and appearance where required for a product’s whole useful life.
  1. Nitrogen Flushing
  • Objective: Alternatively, to make the squash last longer avoid contact with oxygen or the air.
  • Materials: Pure inert nitrogen gas which is CO2 free is allowed into the headspace of the container before they are sealed.
  • Benefits: When oxygen is replaced with nitrogen, nitrogen flushing makes sure the fruit squash maintains its flavor, color and freshness right up to the desired time.