An Australian juice, made with the assistance of the CSIRO, has claimed two awards at the prestigious Beverage Innovation Awards in Germany overnight.

Preshafood Ltd, formerly Donny Boy Fresh Food Company, received the accolade for “Best new juice or juice drink” plus the overall prize of “Best new concept” across all 24 categories. They were also a finalist in the “Best newcomer brand or business” category.

Their juice products were created with innovative technology known as high pressure processing (HPP). HPP uses pressures of about 6000 times the average air pressure at sea level to pasteurise food products.

“The unique benefits of HPP are that it kills microbes such as yeasts, moulds and bacteria, and extends the shelf-life of chilled perishable products without adversely affecting the food’s freshness, flavour, colour, texture and nutritional value,” CSIRO Business Development Manager, Lloyd Simons, explained. “Normally processors would have to use preservatives or heat the product and this inevitably changes the taste and destroys some nutrients.”

“It is exciting and rewarding to see our extensive research effort result in products on supermarket shelves nationally.”

Preshafood’s Managing Director, Andrew Gibb, said CSIRO’s involvement was essential to his company’s start-up.

“Our company began life at CSIRO. We undertook all trials and first commercial production of our Preshafruit juices and fruits in their food processing facility,” Mr Gibb stated. “We are proud of our relationship with them and pleased to have Dr Lyndon Kurth of CSIRO alongside us here in Munich.”

The Beverage Innovation Awards showcases the best global innovations in non-alcoholic drinks, with Preshafood winning ahead of 340 entries from 40 countries.

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