Putting on the Squeeze

The many sides of juicing

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Not everyone who needs juice has the ability or the inclination to take fruit from solid to liquid. And not everyone who has fruit suitable for juicing wants the chore of turning it into juice.

It’s a two-way street­—or perhaps more like a four-way intersection—in the fruit and juicing business and Melissa (Missy) Dobernigg of Vernon’s Cambium Cider has driven in all the lanes.

Dobernigg had a great person to rely on with Kristen Trovato, who, together with her husband Remo, owns Okanagan Beverage Co. and Juicing Systems under parent company, Okanagan Mobile Juicing Inc.

Since 2012, the Trovatos have offered mobile juicing under the self-explanatory informal moniker of Mobile Juicing. The couple and their team have been taking portable juicing equipment where it’s needed to squeeze the life out of fruit.

Kristen saw changes over the past decade as the mobile business grew several times over. Many customers have been fruit growers who wanted to offer juice at their fruit stands plus cideries in need of help. The company added juicing equipment sales to their plate with Juicing Systems becoming its own entity in 2015.

They also diversified their business through a new 6,000 square-foot Okanagan Beverage Co. facility built in Coldstream in February 2022.

“We can target much more fruit and customers,” Trovato explains of the site. “By providing a juicing service, we created a win/win opportunity for the growers.”

Having grown up in the Okanagan, she’s seen the importance of the fruit industry to the region and appreciates that everyone has opportunities to get ahead by working together. Like through the relationship with Dobernigg.

Cambium, which was formerly known as The BX Press, presses its own fruit for cider with Kreuzmayr brand equipment they bought from Juicing Systems. Of course, Okanagan Beverage also uses Kreusmayr, so the new facility is a place others can see the equipment in action or request video footage.

“We’ve got about 30 acres total in apples,” says Dobernigg. “About 20 varieties. There are about five acres in bittersweet and bittersharp cider varieties.”

That amount of acreage is more than Cambium can use for its own needs, so there are multiple ways for the companies to work together.

“We have three different capacities that we work with Kristen,” she says. “We have our own boxed juice with them. They have the flash pasteurizing and bagging equipment. She maintains that high level of food safety we need for juice.”

Okanagan Beverage Co. shines in this area. They can do a basic single fruit juice product or they can create a custom blend. With pressing, filling, packaging, labelling and more within the facility, they manage the logistics in a fully food-safe, licensed environment to process fruit to juice from end-to-end.

“There are lots of different options,” Trovato notes. “It’s not just apples either. We get a lot of cherries. We have a big mission to do more cherries. Apples can be stored; cherries cannot. They are immediate, volatile, and quick to turn. I think there’s a huge opportunity for cherry juice.”

Helping create value from fruit that would go to waste also supports agriculture in the region by creating a return on something that would otherwise be worthless. It can also be challenging to dispose of fruit that doesn’t sell, she says.

Making fruit into juice for others is the second way Dobernigg works with Trovato.

“We do supply apples to other cideries,” Dobernigg says. “Our little press is okay for our size, but not for others too.”

Trovato takes the apples from Dobernigg destined for other cideries and turns them into juice.

“We have grown parallel to the cider industry,” she says. “That is where Mobile Juicing and Juicing Systems fit in nicely. We get a lot of start-up cideries. Pressing and doing the hard, heavy lifting is not for the faint of heart at any level.”

Cideries that have their own orchard can have the mobile juicing equipment come to them, complete with filling equipment, box gluer and other beneficial tools. But, for jobs like Dobernigg’s where juice may be going to multiple buyers, Trovato manages the complete flow of goods.

“I’m kind of a match-maker,” Trovato says. “I have cider-makers that need that fruit security or need those special varieties. On the other hand, I have the growers.”

This helps apple growers keep their trees in apples because they have a regular market for their product at a good price.

When a buyer of juice contacts her for a product under their own brand that they will distribute, she knows everyone will benefit.

“It’s a nice way to use more fruit than just to service our own growers,” she says of the fact that sometimes she’s sourcing specific fruit from outside of the Okanagan. In some cases she’s had fruit shipped to her and has filled a tanker car with juice and shipped it back.

“I love filling tanker trucks,” she says. “The first time we did it, it was so mind-blowing. You see that volume of juice in one shot. We do a lot of that for bigger cideries and out-of-province cideries.”

Juice can be processed in exactly the way the cider-maker or other customer requires. It includes pasteurizing, adding enzymes, cold settling, including sulfites or other procedures.

Dobernigg also presses fruit other than apples for various cider flavours.

“We buy some other B.C. grown fruits that we use in our cider,” Dobernigg says. “We get the easy-to-use juice format from Kristen.”

She gets the fruit she wants, juiced for her without any mess or fuss, ready to go into the recipes. As she says, it keeps her mind focused on the orchard, which is where her heart is. With a new farm-to-table restaurant on-site, having others she can rely on to ensure the business thrives is essential.

Trovato is proud of her company’s dedication to its values. Sustainability is one of the biggest ones and it may lead to new options like dehydrating, pulverizing and composting in the future to create a fully-circular process for the fruit that is such a big part of the Okanagan region and beyond.