New Juices Hit the Shelves, Courtesy Silk Grass Farms
You’ve probably heard the name before – Silk Grass Farms, synonymous with coconut oil produced from that part of southern Belize. Silk Grass Farms is also the manufacturer of a variety of juices. At the helm of the company are former Minister of Government, Doctor Henry Canton, and social entrepreneurs, Mandy Cabot and her husband, Peter Kjellerup, who invested roughly one hundred and twenty million U.S. dollars in the farm and the factory. Today, the media got a chance to tour the facility and News Five’s Marion Ali was there and filed this report.
Marion Ali, Reporting
Meet the new line of juices on cooler shelves in Belize. These twelve-ounce bottles of pineapple, watermelon, and orange juice and coconut water are the proud products of Silk Grass Farms in southern Belize. The juices join the company’s coconut oil that has been on the shelves for four years now. The juices, like the coconut oil, says co-owner Dr. Henry Canton, are produced through cold-compressed processing, to extract all the nutrients in the safest possible way.
Henry Canton
Dr. Henry Canton, Executive Director, Silk Grass Farms
“Cold-pressed is the way that you can get the most natural form of coconut fat or coconut oil because all you’re using is a mechanical way of removing the particular matter and water. Cold-pressing in juices – there are two concepts – cold-press, which we speak to for this – a lot of people refer to cold press when it comes to juices, but it’s not really cold press when it comes to juices. Although it is pressed with colder water, it’s really a higher pressure. It goes up to eighty-seven thousand P.S.I for about three minutes, then it kills everything, all the microbes inside the juice. So there are two different concepts between juice and coconut oil. Coconut cold press and our milks when we talk to cold press juices is gonna be based on the fact that we’ve not added any heat to the nature or change any of the molecules that are in that product. And when we talk to cold press juices, we’re talking to high pressure pasteurization, which is different than just cold press. High pressure pasteurization is using high, high, high pressure for time.”
The media got a firsthand tour of the state-of-the-art processing factory. Dr Canton and co-owner, Mandy Cabot explained the different steps their products go through before they hit the market.
Dr. Henry Canton
“We pick the best fruit. We try to select it by maturity, and quality assurance comes in to make sure that it is wholesome. It then goes into the processing room, where we make it into a juice. If it’s the case of orange juice, it goes through the extractors, if it’s puree, like mango or passion fruit or some of the others, they will go through the other puree machines, go through the finisher and end up right into the same tanks from which they are checked and made sure that they’re the right quality, the right bricks, the right sweetness and that sort of stuff. And then it goes into the bottles and into the H.P.P machine if that’s what we want to do.”
Mandy Cabot
Mandy Cabot, Co-founder, Silk Grass Farms
“We could also create a slurry of juice, like a giant slush-slurping machine and that will help hold product for quite a long time, if it’s being transported in bulks, say, in a large container. So we have that possibility. We have many different options.”
The business partners say that they’ve made the necessary investments that allow them to also expand their juice line because of the seasonality of Belize’s fruits.
Dr. Henry Canton
“We are also practicing seasonality, as opposed to trying to produce it twelve months a year. So one of the things that we have to impregnate into our marketing strategy is seasonality. So with seasonality that means that you will have different juices coming on. We have a lot of hope for like passion fruit. We have a lot of hope for sour sop, and blends of sour sops, even our coconut milk and creams and stuff like that; tropical blends for bar drinks, we can do a completely different type of coconut cream, used for drinks with a lot less sugar and a lot more flavour.”
And while Silk Grass Farms introduces its new tropical juices to the country, it extends a hand of friendship to other processing companies that might need their products to go through high pressure processing.
Mandy Cabot
“We also want to provide a service to other farmers here in Belize. We’ve got state-of-the-art equipment that can extend shelf life and neutralize microbes and other things you don’t want in your food in a whole variety of ways – some with pasteurization, some not, some with high pressure, some with creating a slurry to keep cold foods colder longer and intransit. So we are hoping to provide that service for other growers that we could take their pre-packaged foods and run them through our equipment to likewise extend shelf-life with those foods. So we hope to be of great service.”
Marion Ali for News Five.
Silk Grass Farms juices are packaged in twelve-ounce bottles for two dollars each, while its coconut oil, which has been on the shelves for four years, sells for seventeen dollars per litre.
