Horti Green’s lemon & orange juice concentrates

Bengaluru-based Horti Green Foods promoted its lemon juice and orange juice concentrates at the recent Indusfood Manufacturing show in New Delhi. Priya Vellanki, director – Horti Green Foods, told IndiFoodBev that the lemon juice concentrate is their key product, which is supplied to companies in India such as ITC, Mala’s, Nilon’s, Rasna, Patanjali, Raw Pressery and Hudson Agro Products. The Akshay Patra Foundation uses its lemon concentrate to prepare lemon rice. In contrast, ITC uses it for their pickles, Raw Pressery uses it in its drinks and Mala’s uses it in syrups, Vellanki said.

“We customize our products to our clients’ specific needs and requirements. For commercial production, they require a consistent lemon juice or orange juice concentrate with specific parameters. Throughout the year, we supply the product with specific acidity that the client requires,” Vellanki said.

Horti Green Foods has another company called Horti Green Foods (Thailand), which also produces and supplies lemon and orange juice concentrates. Horti Green’s factory is located in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh, which has the largest mandi (wholesale market) in India for lemons. The oranges, on the other hand, are imported from Egypt.

The company uses the Indian lemon or the Balaji lemon to make the lemon juice concentrate, Vellanki said, adding Valencia oranges are imported from Egypt for the orange juice concentrate. The plant has a production capacity of four tons of juice concentrate per hour, she said.

Horti Green Foods sends its products abroad via merchant exporters while it manages the Indian supplies itself. According to Vellanki, the USP of Horti Green’s juice concentrates is the absence of preservatives and non-frozen products.

A lot of companies in India import lemon juice and orange juice concentrates in a frozen form, which are difficult to handle because warehousing, transportation and so many other parameters need to be managed, she said.

“Our products are completely ambient. We don’t use freezing techniques or preservatives and they are easily available throughout the year. Whether it’s December or June, the product consistency remains the same,” she added.

Citrus products are much in demand in India as it is a very hot country and people expect a glass of lemonade or orange juice to cool off, she said. Though the company is not looking at retail manufacturing as it is primarily a B2B supplier, it is exploring the idea of supplying to the HoReCa segment and retail manufacturers.