What should you look for when choosing quality fruit ingredients?
When searching for the right suppliers for fruit ingredients, food manufacturers and bakeries must consider several factors to ensure the best result for their products.
Below are a few key considerations to be made:
Freshness & Ripeness
To ensure maximum flavour and quality in the end product, harvest time and ripeness of the fruit ingredients is important. Not only does the ripeness of the fruit impact its flavour, it also affects its appearance, texture, and subsequently the mouth feel of the final product. To ensure consistency of ripeness, our fruit is kept in controlled temperature cool rooms before processing. Before processing, the brix of the fruit is tested to check it is at the correct ripeness to be processed, and is tested again once the final product is produced.
Source and Sustainability
As growers ourselves, we understand what is required to produce high-quality fruit, and know what to look for in procuring it for processing. Knowing where and how the fruit is grown is important in selecting a supplier for your fruit ingredients.
Building strong relationships with our trusted growers is essential to make sure we have a consistent supply of high-quality fruit to process. By building these relationships, we can establish clear standards, open communication and are able to conduct regular audits and visits to growers.
Nutritional Content
When choosing your fruit ingredients, it is important to understand the transformation process the whole fruit goes through to create the end product. Some processing techniques will degrade heat sensitive vitamins in the fruit, or reduce antioxidant levels due to cooking.
While some loss of vitamins is unavoidable in a fruit ingredient that is blanched or pasteurised, we reduce this loss by rapid processing, which reduces the exposure to light, heat and oxygen.
Packaging and Shelf Life
The shelf life and packaging you require of your fruit ingredients will also help you choose the right product. We understand that manufacturers and bakeries have different storage and waste disposal capacities.
If you prefer a product that doesn’t require refrigeration storage, and that is pouch packaged, our Brookvale Farms Premium Sliced and Diced apple products would be a great option: https://avondalefoods.com.au/brookvale-farms/
For a puree product that is also shelf stable, and has a long shelf life, explore our aseptically-packed purees: https://avondalefoods.com.au/aseptic-packed-puree/
For a fresh or blanched product, crafted from premium Australian fruit, our Avondale Foods product line offers a variety of packaging formats, suited to the client: https://avondalefoods.com.au/avondale-foods/
By considering each of these factors, manufacturers can be confident in selecting the right high-quality fruit ingredients that enhance their products, while also meeting consumer expectations and industry standards. For more information on selecting the right fruit ingredients for your products, reach out to the friendly Avondale team.
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