A tour of the juice pressing room of Schulp Vruchtensappen was one of the parts of Foodlog live’s programme. Albert Schulp talked about the history of the family company that has been located on Zandpad in Breukelen, the Netherlands, along the river Vecht, since 1861. That’s where Albertus Schulp started growing apples and pears in his standard tree orchard, five generations ago. The love for fruit was passed down from father to son, but in 1995 it became clear there was no longer a future in fruit production. In that year, Albert started processing the fruit into fruit juice, without making concessions to quality. The fruit of other growers, mostly from the Netherlands, and pears from his own orchard, is pressed into juice in the middle of Schulp Vruchtensappen’s own fruit trees.
In 1995, processing 1,000 litres of juice still took an entire day, and lids were manually placed on the bottles. Nowadays, the process is mostly automated and major scaling up has taken place. The process now takes one hour from apple to bottle. The Schulp Vruchtensappen brand has a clear position on the domestic market. Distribution is done via specialist’s shops and catering. Picking their own name as their brand turned out to be a good decision. “Nowadays, the market needs transparency, so it’s a good thing we chose our family name as brand name. Everyone now knows where it comes from.”
Schulp started with apple and pear juice, but over the years, they’ve created more and more juice lines, including organic juices, so they can serve various target audiences now. The fruit is of Dutch origin when possible, but not enough fruit is available for organic juices in the Netherlands. “This sector is given much more room to develop in Germany, legislation is blocking the development in the Netherlands.” Pressing vegetable juices is fairly new for the company. “It’s particularly challenging to keep it 100% natural. Vegetables don’t naturally contain acids, making shelf life challenging.”
The developments within the family company are gradual. They want to retain a maximum grip on quality, and nearly everything is thought of and developed in house. This is done keeping a number of unshakeable principles in mind: the fruit juice is pure and without additives, and they don’t supply to retail. “We want to remain independent, and you’re interchangeable in retail. We have a distinctive product, and our brand can now be found throughout the Netherlands,” Albert says.
Again responding to trends, the juice lines were expanded into multiple flavours. Health and organic are important trends within that. “Demand for cherry juice is seriously increasing, probably because it’s known to improve your sleep and is said to help with rheumatism. Beetroot juice is another fun market,” Albert says. Pressing vegetable juices is completely new for the company. “It’s particularly challenging to keep it 100% natural. Vegetables don’t naturally contain acids, making shelf life challenging.”
Besides the tour at Schulp’s, Foodlog live has other activities on their programme as well, including a market, a tasting session, pitches and a competition.
Socratic talks among participants and professor of Food and Health Jaap Seidell (VU), professor of Dairy Tini van Boekel (WUR), agricultural expert Henk Breman and lifestyle researcher Wim Tilburgs provided an idealistic approach to the day. The apples of farmer Erik, honey tomatoes of Looije, Schulp’s juices and a market with soups, wasabi and seaweed provided a fresh produce sheen, while pigs, organic ice cream from organic farmers and fryske cheese linked to the themes of sustainability, local and organic.
