Mobile Juice Factory
It’s not surprising that an award-winning organic orchardist, viticulturist and wine maker would be concerned about the impact that the fruit industry has on the environment. “Every year there are thousands of pounds of waste fruit going into the landfills,” says Karnail Sidhu, who recently won the BC Grapegrowers Association Viticulturalist of the Year award. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Okanagan orchardists have a convenient option if they want to turn their excess fruit into juice, increase their income and help the environment.
I addition to growing and making award winning organic wines, Karnail owns the Mobile Juice Factory and will travel to your orchard and press your fruit. “We provide orchardists an alternative to dumping, as well as a creating a value-added product,” Karnail explains. “We serve the smaller fruit grower, someone who might have their own roadside stand. If they have extra fruit at the end of the season or culls that they want to use, we can turn them into juice and pack it up in a bag in the box.”
The mobile juice factory will travel to an orchard if a grower has as little as 10 bins of fruit. “That is the minimum order that we can process at an orchard site,” Karnail explains. But if you have less, he will work to see if he can coordinate with another farm. “If I have a call for six bins in Oliver for instance, I will try and connect with another grower in the area and see if we can make up the 10-bin minimum for the trip.”
And backyard growers won’t be left out. “We also offer a juicing service to home growers, through our community juicing events,” Karnail explains. “Someone who may only have one or two trees in their yard, but they want to put up some juice for their family.”
“We set up the juice factory here at the winery in West Kelowna and we also travel to other communities such as Salmon Arm, Armstrong and Abbotsford and hold day long juicing events,” Karnail explains. With a minimum of 150 pounds of fruit, the backyard grower will go home with nine or ten, 5-liter bag-in-the-box containers of juice.
If you are a small winery or cidery, the juice factory can adapt their line to produce unpasteurized juice, suitable for fermentation. If you want custom labels or a different size box, they can do that too.
Karnail Sidhu
Apples are the most common juicing option, but Karnail says they can handle pears, cherries and other stone fruits, berries, grapes and even some vegetables. Indeed, Kalala sells organic ABC juice (Apple, Beet and Carrot) at the winery tasting room. The fruit just needs to be clean and Karnail warns they should not be windfalls that could carry a fungus.
The fruit is loaded into the juice machine by hand. “We are able to give one last sort to the fruit as we load it,” Karnail says. The fruit is washed twice on the way to be shredded and then pressed. After being flash pasteurized, the pure juice (no additives) comes off the line and is vacuum packed into plastic pouches. The leftover fruit mash is collected in a bin. The boxed juice is shelf stable for a year and can stay fresh for up to three months after opening, without refrigeration.
Keep it out of the landfill, join a juicing event and get an amazing product with your very own fruit.
“This is the healthiest juice that you can get,” says Karnail. “The list of ingredients is just two words, ‘pure juice’”