Saving fruit & vegetables is so much fun! You never know when and what will come in. But the most exciting thing is probably the reason why the fruit & vegetables should be thrown away.
Here we have collected our most exciting and different rescue stories from recent years.
PINEAPPLE RESCUE
Many years ago we had a different conversation:
"We have 18 tons of pineapple that will have to be thrown away! Our cargo is stuck in customs because they found one of Europe's largest cocaine seizures on the boat. So when we get the pineapple off, it will be 'too ripe' to be sold."
Had we ever squeezed a pineapple? No, we hadn't. Did we know how to do it? No, not that either, but as we all know, there's nothing you can't learn on YouTube. The rescued pineapple became 20,000 bottles of limited edition pineapple juice and we'll remember it forever.
Sometimes there are strange circumstances behind our rescues!
THE GREAT PEAR RESCUE
A while ago we received a call from a Swedish grower who taught us something new.
What did we learn? Well, if you want to convert a conventional orchard to an organic one, it takes three years and during the transition period there is a risk that the entire harvest will fall through the cracks. How can it do that, you might wonder. Here are some points:
- You cannot sell the fruit as ORGANIC as the conversion is not complete.
- You cannot sell the fruit to conventional packers as the shelf life of the fruit is not as long given that you use eco-approved spraying methods.
- If you still manage to sell the fruit as conventional fruit, the profitability is incredibly poor given that you use organically approved growing methods, but which you cannot take into account in your pricing during the conversion period.
Quickly and easily finding a food manufacturer who wants to buy 100 tons of pears and is willing to pay for it requires sales power, something growers usually don't have.
This way, it can sometimes be cheaper not to harvest at all and let perfectly good, fantastic fruit rot away. At the same time, we import pears from all corners of the world.
The call we received was about a harvest of 100 tons of pears that is at risk of being thrown away due to the transition.
We gathered around the drawing board to find a solution and the result was a new baginbox. A salvaged pear and apple juice.
BEETROOT RESCUE
Size matters, but not for taste.
Tons of beetroots that are “too” big are never eaten. They are not sold in our stores and they do not fit in the food industry’s machinery. We thought that was crazy. So we turned up the heat a bit and voila, we could take care of the big giants too.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF BEETROOTS
You recognize it as the little pot's best friend: beetroot. But what you didn't know is that it's packed with a lot of health benefits.
Beetroot is full of nutrients like minerals, vitamins and antioxidants - all important parts of your health. It is also high in nitrate which can improve endurance. With all the spring Vasalopp, Göteborgsvarv and Swedish classics just around the corner, we took the opportunity to collect the superpowers of beetroot all in the form of the world's tastiest beetroot juice.
If you want to read more about the superpowers of beets, we recommend Sweden's largest health magazine, MåBras, an article about the health benefits of beets.
