The juice industry is losing market share to waters due to higher calorific values, acidity and price. How can vegetable juices turn this negative trend? Harry Zwart finds out.

Vegetable juice concentrates can make a valuable contribution when facing these key issues:

Calorific values

In general, vegetable juice contains approximately 30% less calories than fruit juice. For example, a 200ml glass of orange juice contains 92 calories as opposed to 62 calories in a glass of carrot juice. Combining fruit and vegetable juices can provide a full-bodied taste and a content of 100% fruits and vegetables, but with fewer calories, which fits well in a calorie-reduced diet.

Acidity reduction

Consumer reports have shown that certain consumers prefer not to drink 100% fruit juice because of its acidity. As vegetable juice contains less acid, blending a fruit juice with a vegetable juice will reduce the overall acid level of the blend, with less impact on teeth and reflux.

Price pressures

Retailers are putting pressure on overall price levels and rarely allow price increases. Also, price fluctuations of certain fruits have led to de-listings. To regain this volume and defend market share, a lower and more stable price is important.

At SVZ International, we grow all of our vegetables under contract with farmers with stabilised prices, so it’s possible to have a fixed price for a longer period. It’s beneficial to already know the contract price at an early stage without unpleasant surprises afterwards. Vegetable prices are on average also lower than a lot of fruits, which will lead to a lower blend price for fruit and vegetable juices.

Convenience, health aspects and sustainability

Many consumers have difficulties reaching the required daily intake (RDI) level for vegetables. Drinking a blend of fruit and vegetable juices can help to reach that RDI. The blend can be one of the required ‘five a day’.

Vegetables are perceived as healthy by people all over the world. This healthy image is based on functionalities such as the fibre content and specific bioactive ingredients, for example:

• Red beet – rich in folic acid and betaine, which may have positive effects on reducing fat accumulation, as well as the immune system and stamina.
• Carrot – contains higher amounts of carotenoids, which are linked to possible positive effects against heart diseases and cancer. The high vitamin A content is related to cholesterol reduction.
• Spinach – contains vitamin A, but also glucosinolates and lutein, which are all linked to possible positive effects against heart disease and cancer.

Vegetables also have a vitamin pattern that’s different from fruit. Where fruits are mostly known for their vitamin C content, vegetables also contain other vitamins such as A, B and K.

Sustainability and corporate social responsibility

Food production is contributing to the carbon dioxide emission and therefore a reduced carbon footprint is highly appreciated. In general, vegetables can be grown in any location, and SVZ has chosen to grow all the vegetables in the surroundings of its juice processing plants in Poland and the US.

The few kilometres between the growing area and the production plant guarantee fresh raw materials and a minimum CO2 emission per kilogram end product. Most vegetables are grown under Agronomical Frameworks, as this comes with contract growing and offers security to the farmers. Within this, the use of pesticides is prescribed as well as controlled. The result is a correct, minimal dosage of pesticides, which is beneficial not only to the environment, but also to the farmer and the consumer.

Vegetable juices offer exciting marketing opportunities through new taste combinations and in promoting various aspects of health and sustainability.

Harry Zwart is product group manager vegetables & organics for SVZ International.

• If you enjoyed this article, you may also like Richard Hall’s opinion from 16 June: Fruit, vegetables and health

Google’s celebration of Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary was fun, enabling people to play Pac-Man on their main search page, either as a one- or two-player game. And people certainly took advantage of the opportunity, spending approximately 4,819,352 hours on the game alone. The result is approximately $120 million in productivity lost, in one day.

Thankfully, Google tossed out the logo with pretty low “perceived affordance” – they put an “insert coin” button next to the search button, but I imagine most users missed that. In fact, I’d wager that 75% of the people who saw the logo had no idea that you could actually play it. Which the world should be thankful for.

Link – via gizmodo

photo by ricardo / zone41.net

A recent analysis performed by the Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC) for the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) shows that over the past eight years, the average gram weight of the 16.9oz single-serve bottled water container has dropped by 32.6%.

The average PET bottled water container weighed 18.9g in 2000, and by 2008 the average amount of PET resin in each bottle has declined to 12.7g. BMC estimated that during this time span, more than 1.3bn pounds of PET resin has been saved by the bottled water industry through container lightweighting. In 2008 alone, the bottled water industry saved 445m pounds of PET plastic by reducing the weight of its plastic bottles.

IBWA also recently commissioned a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) study to determine the environmental footprint of the US bottled water industry. Franklin Associates, a division of ERG, produced the LCI and prepared a report that quantified the energy requirements, solid waste generation and greenhouse gas emissions for the production, packaging, transport and end-of- life management for bottled water consumed in the US in 2007.

The results indicate that bottled water has a very small environmental footprint.

The study found:

• Measurement based on British Thermal Units (BTUs) indicates that the energy consumed to produce small-pack water bottled water containers (containers from 8oz to 2.5 gallons) amounted to only 0.067% of the total energy use in the US in 2007. Home and Office Delivery (HOD) bottled water (reusable bottles from 2.5 to 5 gallons) energy consumption only amounted to 0.003% of the total energy used in the US in 2007.
• The small-pack and HOD bottled water industries’ combined greenhouse gas/CO2 emissions amounted to only 0.08% of total US greenhouse gas emissions.
• Bottled water packaging discards accounted for only 0.64% of the 169m tonnes of total US Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) discards in 2007.
• The process and transportation BTU energy use for the bottled water industry was only 0.07% of total US BTU primary energy consumption.
• Greenhouse gas emissions per half gallon of single-serve bottled water came to 426.4g CO2 equivalent, which is 75% less CO2 eq per half gallon than orange juice.
• Small-pack bottled water generates 46% less CO2 eq when compared to soft drinks also packaged in PET plastic.

In November 2009, IBWA reported the national recycling rate for PET plastic bottled water containers (0.5-litre or 16.9oz size) now stands at a record 30.9% for 2008, a year-over-year improvement of 32% over 2007 rates, according to new data from two new studies: 2008 Post Consumer PET Bottle Bale Composition Analysis and 2008 Report on PET Water Bottle Recycling, both produced by the National Association for PET Container Resources (Napcor) for IBWA.

Previously, the 2007 Napcor study on water bottle recycling determined that the recycling rate for water bottles was 23.4%, representing a sizeable 16.42% increase over the 2006 recycling rate of 20.1%.

The bottled water industry’s momentum towards more recycling and container lightweighting “can be seen as quickly going in the right direction,” says Tom Lauria. “These are sure signs of improvement, but Earth Day is no time to rest on our laurels. Far more needs to be done with all plastic products and containers. “Empty water bottles comprise only a third of 1% of the waste stream. So even if bottled water containers were to hit a 100% recycle rate, there would still be far too many plastic containers of all kinds in the landfills. Let’s hope Earth Day inspires a more comprehensive approach to recycling all product containers, rather than the current activists’ focus, which seems to be only on empty water bottles.”

Source: IBWA