BLUE LAKE CITRUS LAUNCHES NEW ORGANIC PRODUCTS

As if its delicious line of all-natural juices wasn't enough, Winter Haven-based Blue Lake Citrus has just launched two new product lines under different brand names.

The Noble Organics brand now offers several not-from-concentrate lemonades including raspberry, strawberry and regular flavors. They'll be offered in the summer months when orange juice consumption usually dips.

"We also saw a need for the product because there wasn't an organic lemonade available in the U.S. in the refrigerated section of the store," said Wade Groetsch, president of Blue Lake Citrus.

Florida tangerines are washed and sorted before being processed into the Noble line of premium juice.

The other new product line is organic orange juice, launched under the Blue Lake Organics brand. It's less costly than some organic orange juice because it's from concentrate. Two versions are available, regular and fortified with calcium and vitamin D. The orange juice will be sold year-round.

Groetsch says one reason Blue Lake developed the from-concentrate product was low supplies of fruit. "Once that limited supply of fruit gets used up, there is no more. New groves are not coming in fast enough to make up for it," he said. So the company decided to offer a lower priced product by sourcing organic concentrate from Brazil.

The products were unveiled in late March at the Natural Products Expo West show and are sold in various sizes. Current distribution is mainly from Massachusetts to Florida, but expanding into other markets across the country.

ALWAYS LOOKING TO INNOVATE

Blue Lake Citrus Products is owned by William G. Roe & Sons, producers and marketers of premium, not-from-concentrate juices marketed in the produce sections of supermarkets. Noble juices include tangerine, and combinations of tangerine with guava, clementine and mango juices as well as a line of grapefruit juice.

"Quentin Roe and his sister, Martha, had the idea back in '95 of taking the tangerines, which they loved, and turning them into what they considered a superior juice," said Groetsch. "They started selling the Noble Tangerine line of juices in the produce section, which was quite innovative at the time."

Blue Lake Citrus' two new product lines will be sold in biodegradable bottles.

Blue Lake became the sole supplier for the Noble tangerine juices and has branched out to supply the juices to domestic and international markets.

The company harvests its fruit using what it calls the "Grove Select" method, where only small quantities are harvested at one time. Uniform ripeness is the goal. The same tree may be picked several times during the season before all fruit has been removed.

EVEN MORE

Not only are the new lemonades and orange juices organic, the bottles are environmentally friendly. They're made from corn, converted to a 100 percent biodegradable material similar to plastic. That makes Blue Lake the first juice company with this type of bottle to sell product nationwide.

As this Harvester Online article is being written, the transition to the biodegradable bottles hadn't quite been completed. Groetsch said the 32-ounce sizes should be in biodegradable bottles by the first week of June, the 12-ounce size by mid-June and the 55-ounce size by the end of June or early July. The bottle manufacturer still needs to adjust processing parameters a bit, so at the moment, many of the juices are sold in standard plastic containers.

"We thought the biodegradable bottles were a neat concept," said Groetsch. It just made sense with our product line - the all-natural line, the organics. It just fit the direction we're going as a company."

Wade Groetsch, president of Blue Lake Citrus, displays the company's new organic lemonade and juice lines.