Sugar-reducing tech for orange juice

Foodtech start-up Better Juice is collaborating with a German process engineering firm for the food and beverage sectors, GEA Group, to scale up its sugar reduction technology.

The partnership sees both companies collaboratively construct and install the sugar reduction innovative solution to reduce all types of sugars in orange juice and market the system globally.

GEA will engineer, design, manufacture and install the bioreactor that reduces sugars via Better Juice’s proprietary enzymatic process. Better Juice will produce the immobilised microorganisms for the enzymatic process.

The process is claimed to reduce sugar without negatively impacting the natural nutritional values and prebiotic benefits of fresh orange juice, which has been a key challenge in the past.

The enzymatic technology uses natural ingredients to convert fructose, glucose and sucrose into prebiotic dietary fibres and other non-digestible molecules. Claimed to reduce up to 80% of sugars in orange juice, the technology is designed to target the specific sugar composition in orange juice to naturally create a sweet tasting, low-calorie, reduced-sugar product without sweeteners or other additives used to replace the sugars.

Eran Blachinsky, PhD, founder and CEO of Better Juice, is pleased with the collaboration, which aims to help commercialise the technology.

“This exciting collaboration marks a major milestone in Better Juice’s scale-up plans and advances the commercialisation of our technology,” she said.

Colm O’Gorman, Head of Sales Management for GEA’s Global Technology Center for Non-Alcoholic Beverages, said the company looks forward to helping Better Juice develop the market for sugar-reduced juice.

Image caption: Eran Blachinsky and Gali Yarom, the Co-founders of Better Juice.