Production

Juice production

The traditional cold pressing methods we employ, extract a clear juice which retains all the healthy goodness of real fruit juice. Chilled fruit is crushed, pressed and further chilled before bottling, to retain natural flavour and provide optimum drinking quality and shelf life.

Harcourt Apple Juice is manufactured weekly and distributed immediately via our distribution network.

Purchasing All our juice fruit is sourced from the Harcourt Valley. We deal with 90% of the growers in the Harcourt region and purchase our fruit direct from the growers or through the Harcourt Coolstores. All fruit is washed and graded (sorting table-grade fruit from juice-grade fruit) prior to being placed in 350 kg bulk bins where it is then transported to our coolstores. The fruit that we use for our juice is selected to give us a finished product which reaches our high standards of colour, clarity and taste. The fruit should:- > Produce a lighter colour juice (colour) > Produce very little sediment (clarity) > Be not too sweet (taste)

Refrigeration

All our fruit is stored in coolstores at 1ºC until it is required for use. This ensures that the fruit is in best condition and will therefore produce the best quality juice for you.

Crushing

Upon removal from cold storage, the fruit is crushed in a rotary crusher to produce a fine pulp. Crushing the fruit greatly assists with the extraction of the juice from the fruit.

Loading the fruit into the bin tipper.	Final inspection of fruit before crushing.
Elevator transports fruit to crusher.	Crushed fruit (pulp) pours into hopper before  being pumped into the press.

Pressing Immediately after crushing, the fruit pulp is pumped into a 1 meter diameter press, where it is cold pressed (no additional heat applied) to extract the juice from the pulp. The press subjects the pulp to 830kPa (120 psi) pressure and this ensures almost total juice extraction from the pulp.

Chilling

Once the juice has been extracted from the pulp, it passes through a Glycol heat exchanger to further reduce the temperature of the juice. Keeping the temperature of the juice as low as possible helps the juice taste better and last longer. As our juices are FRESH juices, not pasteurized or reconstituted fruit juice drinks, we need to take extra good care of it to ensure you have the best juice possible.

Settle and blend After passing through the heat exchanger, the juice is pumped into a 5000L stainless steel holding tank in our coolroom. In this tank, the juice from that various varieties of apples are blended to achieve our required taste. While the juice is in the tank, any sediment (tiny particles of apple that escape the press) settles out of the juice so that the final product is clear and appetizing.

Bottling After settling overnight, the juice is bottled and packed for distribution into shops and supermarkets. Schools and hospitals are also very keen to use our juices because they are so healthy and tasty.

Distribution

Once the orders from the distributors have been assembled, they are loaded into our refrigerated truck for delivery.

 

(Click here for Apple Cider Vinegar production method)