Lid is off Whakatu's new $30m 'black box' apple juice drink factory

Hawke's Bay Apple Press founder and managing director Ross Beaton with head of innovation and strategy Sally Gallagher. Photo / Paul Taylor

A new $30 million state-of-the-art drinks factory in Whakatu fired up for the first time yesterday, bringing 27 new jobs and highlighting Hawke's Bay's reputation as a world leader in fruit produce.

The building, shaped like a "black box", is home to newly formed apple juice producer, the Apple Press, founded by local apple-grower and businessman Ross Beaton who spent five years trying to get the project off the ground.

After Beaton hit on the idea of utilising some of the 13,000 tonnes of so called "ugly fruit" (cosmetically blemished apples that others reject), he got together with food innovation specialist Sally Gallagher to create the Apple Press.

They were unable find a factory with the capability to do it "so, I thought, I better build it", Beaton said.

The high-tech $30m plant now employs 27 people and can produce thousands of bottles of juice per hour, using drinks bottling equipment from German company Krones.

"It's the bottling equivalent of a BMW," Beaton said.

"It's very exciting, it's taken a while but it's good. We have fabulous ingredients, we have world-leading technology, and we are making an outstanding product that can take on the rest of the world.

"Supply is not an issue, we will be taking our [supply] throughout the apple season."

Parent company Apollo Foods, which funded development of the plant, also had a strategic alliance with fruit grower T & G.

He stressed the apples were not ones left on the ground, they were "hand-picked" but just slightly blemished.

The Apple Press gives apple lovers the opportunity to enjoy their favourite Hawke's Bay apples, Royal Gala, Jazz™ and Braeburn, as single varietal juices with no added sugar or preservatives.

"We cold-press the apple once to capture all of the flavour and aromas of that apple."

The Apple Press will be available in chillers nationwide from today but Beaton told Hawke's Bay Today the company planned to export the product globally, to the same countries that bought New Zealand apples.

"We have the world's best apples - why not make the world's best apple juice? It's something we're proud of. Something we stand by."

The facility also provided the ability to trace the apples back to the orchards they came from, while bottles are 100 per cent recyclable PET packaging.

The operation's innovative beverage filling technology, which allows a range of different containers to be produced on site and filled with a range of different products on the one production line, was a leading reason why Fonterra last month entered into an agreement to bottle its Mammoth flavoured milk drink at the plant.