Orange Juice

Extraction squeezes the juice from the fruit while keeping the peel intact enough to avoid pressing its bitter oils into the juice — a mechanical problem specific to citrus, since the flavour-destroying material sits in the skin around the part being extracted. The raw juice is then finished to remove excess pulp, pasteurised to inactivate enzymes and microbes, and either concentrated by evaporation or held as single-strength juice.

Frozen concentrated orange juice

Juice evaporated to a dense concentrate and frozen. Compact to ship, long to store, and reconstituted with water at the packing market.

Not-from-concentrate

Pasteurised single-strength juice, never concentrated, held chilled in aseptic bulk tanks and shipped refrigerated at full volume.

Aroma and essence add-back

Volatiles and oils recovered during processing and returned to the juice, because juice stripped of them tastes flat.

Juice is specified on soluble solids, acidity, and the ratio between them, along with colour, pulp content, and sensory character. None of these are things a processor creates: they arrive with the fruit, varying by cultivar, region, season, and maturity at harvest. What a processor does is blend — combining juice from different fruit, different groves, and different points in the season to hold a consistent product across a year in which no two deliveries are the same.

Because orange juice is a high-volume, high-value commodity product sold on a simple promise, it attracts adulteration: dilution, added sugars, added pulp wash, and blending with cheaper juices are all known problems, and analytical authentication is a routine part of the trade. Product standards defining what may be called orange juice, and what may be added to it, are jurisdictional and are enforced by food authorities.

Concentrate ships frozen in drums and in bulk, and has an established futures market — one of the few processed food products to have one, a mark of how standardised and how heavily traded it is. Not-from-concentrate moves chilled in dedicated aseptic tankers and shore tanks, a logistics chain built specifically for it. Both feed packers close to the consuming market, and essentially all of it is drunk, as juice or in blends and nectars, with smaller volumes used as a flavour and sweetening ingredient.

• Beverage — orange juice as sold, reconstituted or not-from-concentrate
• Beverage — juice blends, nectars, and soft-drink bases
• Food — a flavour and juice-content ingredient in other products