Israel’s Better Juice Partners With Brazilian Producer For Sugar-Reduced Juice Pilot Plant

Israeli startup Better Juice, the food tech firm that seeks to reduce all types of sugar in orange juice with tech, has teamed up with Brazilian-based orange juice and fruit juice producer Citrosuco SA to set up a pilot plant to continue the sugar reduction process, the company announced Monday.

Citrosuco will provide the funding for the pilot as well as technical and operationl expertise, the statement said.

Founded in 2017, Better Juice aims to reduce sugar in fruit juice without the reduction of dietary fiber, an outcome of the juicing process. With a seed investment and support from The Kitchen Hub food tech incubator, the company developed a unique enzymatic technology that reduces the caloric and sugar content of all types of fruit juice while increasing the amount of fiber. There is no compromise on taste, texture, or nutritional value, the company has said.

“This collaboration with Citrosuco is a vote of confidence in Better Juice’s leading technology and its capabilities for reducing sugar in orange juice,” said Dr. Eran Blachinsky, founder and CEO of Better Juice. “We’re excited to work with this strategic partner and help create juices with low sugar — the latest frontier in sugar reduction.”

“We have been seeking an orange juice sugar reduction technology for some time,” said Alex Marie Schuermans, product development and applications general manager of Citrosuco. “Better Juice’s solution holds a lot of promise and we are confident that by combining their technology with our know-how, we can accelerate production of the first sugar-reduced orange juice.”

“Currently, there is no solution for natural sugary products like juice,” Blachinsky told NoCamels in April, “There are many other alternatives that are sugar-reduced, but they are synthetic, like Coca Cola or Nestea which add a sugar alternative such as stevia or aspartame.”

“Our proprietary technology can be tuned to reduce between 30 percent to 80 percent of all the sugars in orange juice,” Blachinsky explained in the statement.

While it’s considered a young company, Better Juice has already won the “Most Innovative Technology” award at the Startup Innovation Challenge at Health Ingrediants Europe in Frankfurt in 2018.

In March, the company won a €50,000 grant from the EU’s Horizon 2020 program.