“Young people are increasingly interested in getting their serve of fruit in a processed form and quickly turning away from whole fruits” – Julian Mellentin.
The New Zealand – based New Nutrition Business editor said super fruits were cashing in on changing consumer preferences, particularly among young people who seek convenience and so choose an acai juice over eating an apple an apple a pear.

Convenience was one aspect in increase of superfruits. Along with sensory appeal, originality, control of supply, health benefits and price. Mellentin noted that superfruit juices presented fruits in their most convenient structure, a reality that allowed heavy price premiums to be charged due to the appeal to increasingly time-starved consumers.

These same consumers were drawn to a juice product over a particular whole fruit such as pomegranate that can be time-consuming, messy and difficult to eat in its whole form.

Superfruit juices offered cost savings for growers and producers as end-product appearance concerns were dispensed with. Superfruit extract-based food supplements such as bilberry, cranberry, acerola and pomegranate were also performing strongly, and bilberry had become the world’s most expensive fruit.

Japanese food and beverage makers were increasingly focusing research and development on superfruits with health benefits ranging from the eyes, to skin to metabolic syndrome and general immunity.

The other five factors

Mellentin observed a defining factor in the success of superfruits is the fact they sell at low volumes but command high premiums. This situation is being driven by:

• Sensory appeal. It s a formulators that can improve on unpleasant taste that may exist in the whole fruit.
• Novelty. It highlights the point that superfruit success lays not so much in the fruit, but the format in which it is presented.
• Control of supply. Without this differentiation of product offering may be lost so securing ownership of Plant Variety Rights becomes important.
• Health benefit. A positive relationship between the quantity of science and a superfruit’s status with cranberry, blueberry and pomegranate leading the way.
• Marketing. The success of a pomegranate which employed grassroots marketing such as sampling and a cassis campaign that created a cartoon character.

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