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- Orange industry still in turmoil, but also positive news
Orange industry still in turmoil, but also positive news
And new trends and consumer behavior open up new opportunities, for brands, products and marketing.
Jan van Iperen
December 16, 2024
For Professionals in the Juice and Citrus industry
While the year’s end is nearing, it is busier than ever. Keep an eye on that OJ futures ticker these days, it is super interesting how diverse the news is, even with an overall trend that is concerning… those couple of lights on horizon are the ones that drive a worldwide change.
Sorry for the interruptions, there will be a few more, but all for a brand new and (faster to compile) improved version of Juice News!
In Today's newsletter:
Can you believe the detail? This image was generated with AI.
🧃 Juice News
Liquid Death, a brand that sells water in beer cans, achieved a $1.4 billion valuation in 2024. WSJ goes inside how it is disrupting the packaged water industry by marketing itself as the counter-culture choice.
The city of Berkeley's first-in-the-nation soda tax a decade ago, along with more recent Bay Area tax increases on sugar-sweetened drinks, have not only led to reduced sales. They are also associated with significant changes in social norms and attitudes about the healthfulness of sweet drinks, said Kristine A. Madsen, a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health and senior author of a paper published Nov. 25 in the journal BMC Public Health.
Muska Co., Ltd. developed the 100% natural sleep beverage, Sleeping Bottle, using patented technology that induces sleep and enhances sleep quality. Despite being made from natural ingredients, clinical trials demonstrated clear improvements in seven subjective sleep quality factors, including sleep onset time, sleep disturbances, and daytime functional impairment.
The affected coconut water was distributed exclusively in the United States, reaching 22 states primarily in the Eastern half of the country: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Though the FDA’s notice doesn’t say where the affected products were sold, 17.5-ounce cans of Jarritos coconut water can be found on the websites for Walmart, Kroger, and other well-known retailers.
Tropicana’s latest design blunder shows both the importance of package design in drawing and retaining customers sensitive to even the slightest tweaks. Tropicana may also have taken the wrong lesson from the 2009 mishap.
Companies now rigorously test design changes with consumers before they roll out across stores. But companies don’t have great metrics for predicting whether those changes will actually increase sales, Lamoureux said. The metrics brands test for are around whether products stand out on crowded shelves or contain any glaring issues.
Drinks Ventures GmbH and Canable, a leading co-packing service provider based in Berlin, are excited to announce the launch of its new financing program aimed at helping beverage brands rapidly scale their operations. This initiative offers unlimited funding at competitive rates to qualifying companies, enabling them to meet growing demand and expand their market presence.
🍊 Citrus News
The 2024-2025 Florida all orange forecast released today by the USDA Agricultural Statistics Board is 12.0 million boxes, down 20 percent from the October forecast. If realized, this will be 33 percent less than last season’s final production. The forecast consists of 5.00 million boxes of non-Valencia oranges (early, mid-season, and Navel varieties) and 7.00 million boxes of Valencia oranges.
In comparison to the last forecast in September, which projected 215.78 million boxes, the new update indicates an increase of 3.4%, corresponding to an addition of 7.36 million boxes. This increment arises from the addition of 4.91 million boxes originating from the fourth bloom and approximately 2.45 million boxes from the first three blooms. This total of 2.45 million boxes reflects the increase of 7.06 million boxes of the Pera Rio variety, offset by the reduction of 4.61 million boxes of the other varieties from the first three blooms.
As part of the “Pure Origins” campaign, Citromax Flavors is unveiling a new range of sustainable flavor solutions, delivering bold, inventive ingredients that meet the evolving needs of the global food and beverage market. These offerings honor Citromax Flavors’ roots while pioneering the future of climate-conscious flavors, giving customers access to ingredients that taste great and are responsibly sourced and produced.
Experts say climate change has taken a toll on the citrus fruit production in the country, causing huge losses in terms of exports. The shortage of oranges has also affected domestic sales, leaving consumers with limited options. This year, Kinnow production is likely to drop by 35 percent due to the smog and fog.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA FAS) expects Costa Rican orange production to increase approximately 11% in 2024–25, to 250,000 metric tons. Production in 2023–24 was lower than expected at 225,000 metric tons as a result of erratic rainfall patterns associated with the El Niño weather phenomenon.
The area planted in oranges is expected to remain unchanged in 2024–25 at 21,000 hectares. That includes plantings on the Nicaraguan side of the border for processing in Costa Rica.
Eastroc shares have climbed 57% this year, giving the Shenzhen-based company a market value of about $15.8 billion. Established in 1994, the company sells drinks including vitamin energy and electrolyte beverages, Chinese-style sugar-free teas, coffee, and coconut milk.
🔬 Research Worth Reading
“Although non-nutritive sweeteners (also known as sugar substitutes) are used to replace added sugar, our study demonstrates consumers of food and beverages with sugar substitutes are also consuming other foods and beverages that are high in nutrients of concern, such as saturated fats, sodium, and added sugar,” said the lead author Allison Sylvetsky, an associate professor of exercise and nutrition sciences at the GW Milken Institute School of Public Health.
Overall, limonin modulates key immune responses and metabolic pathways related to inflammation and mitochondrial health in psoriasis. Therefore, it is a promising natural candidate for the treatment of psoriasis and various inflammatory skin diseases.
Developing new fruit tree varieties through traditional breeding is both laborious and time-intensive, primarily due to their prolonged generation cycles and high levels of heterozygosity. The advent of CRISPR/Cas editing technology offers a promising solution to these challenges. Successful applications of CRISPR/Cas editing have already been reported in crops such as citrus (Jia and Wang 2014), grape (Malnoy et al. 2016), and apple (Nishitani et al. 2016).
The treatment of orange juice wastewater (OJW) presents significant environmental and economic challenges due to its high organic content and acidic nature. In this study, we propose a sustainable approach for wastewater treatment by employing a hybrid system combining electrocoagulation (EC) with dead-end membrane filtration (DEMF).
Given the severe economic burden that citrus greening disease imposes on fruit farmers and related industries, rapid and accurate disease detection is particularly crucial. This not only effectively curbs the spread of the disease, but also significantly reduces reliance on manual detection within extensive citrus planting areas. Objective: In response to this challenge, and to address the issues posed by resource-constrained platforms and complex backgrounds, this paper designs and proposes a novel method for the recognition and localization of citrus greening disease, named the HHS-RT-DETR model. The goal of this model is to achieve precise detection and localization of the disease while maintaining efficiency.