Biotta Pomegranate – From tree to bottle

Turkey is a huge coun­try. This be­comes abun­dantly clear when, from Is­tan­bul, there's still an­other two hours’ fly­ing to reach the south east of the coun­try. A mod­ern in­fra­struc­ture has sprung up in re­cent years. Cities such as Adiya­man or Erz­in­can now have mod­ern air­ports. From Adiya­man, the jour­ney con­tin­ues for a fur­ther two to three hours by car on well-main­tained roads, to the far south east of the coun­try close to the Syr­ian bor­der. For cli­mate rea­sons, pome­gran­ates are pri­mar­ily grown around the Mediter­ranean. Turkey is one of the biggest pro­duc­ers. To­day, most or­ganic pome­gran­ates orig­i­nate from the area around Kozan (Adana province) or fur­ther north in the re­gion of Erz­in­can. It was here where a num­ber of in­no­v­a­tive com­pa­nies com­menced cul­ti­va­tion some 20 years ago. Tar­geted re­for­esta­tion has re­sulted in the cre­ation of pome­gran­ate or­chards of around 50 hectares in size, each man­aged by one farmer. Cul­ti­va­tion is strictly reg­u­lated, and is closely mon­i­tored and doc­u­mented by the state agri­cul­tural au­thor­ity. Each field is sur­veyed pre­cisely and reg­is­tered with the Re­gional De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture, and has fer­til­i­sa­tion and ir­ri­ga­tion plans. In ad­di­tion, the fields are sub­jected to an an­nual qual­ity con­trol and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of pro­cess­ing by Bio-Su­isse.

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The pome­gran­ate trees are pruned from Jan­u­ary to Feb­ru­ary. Flow­er­ing be­gins shortly af­ter­wards, dur­ing which the trees are a blaze of mag­nif­i­cent crim­son. Dur­ing the grow­ing sea­son, which lasts un­til the end of Au­gust, there is im­por­tant work to be done in the fields: Pest con­trol, for ex­am­ple, in­volves plac­ing traps as no pes­ti­cides are used in the cul­ti­va­tion of or­ganic pome­gran­ates, and re­peat­edly free­ing the soil from grass and weeds to ward off soil-borne pests. Af­ter pol­li­na­tion, around 50 – 100 kg of fruit grow on each tree de­pend­ing on the level of prun­ing, with the heav­i­est fruit weigh­ing up to 700 g. Pome­gran­ates grow at dif­fer­ent rates, which is why not all are har­vested at the same time. The farm­ers can tell sim­ply by look­ing at the fruit's ca­lyx whether the pome­gran­ate is ripe or needs more time. This re­quires a trained eye.

The pome­gran­ates are har­vested be­tween the end of Sep­tem­ber and mid-No­vem­ber. Juic­ing al­ways fol­lows within 48 hours of har­vest­ing – de­spite the enor­mous trans­port dis­tances that can be in­volved. Af­ter wash­ing, the pome­gran­ates are cracked open and pit­ted. The red seeds go into the juicer and are gen­tly pressed. The pome­gran­ate juice for Biotta is pas­teurised, packed in 200-kg con­tain­ers and placed in cold stor­age im­me­di­ately. With cheaper juices, stor­age costs are lower as the juice is con­cen­trated down to an eighth of its vol­ume af­ter juic­ing by evap­o­rat­ing out all the wa­ter. Dur­ing this process, how­ever, im­por­tant sec­ondary plant com­pounds are lost. This is why Biotta juices are all “not from con­cen­trate”. Af­ter cold stor­age, the bar­rels are shipped to Biotta by sea and rail via Rot­ter­dam. The pome­gran­ate seeds that not used for the juice are dried in pro­duc­tion af­ter press­ing. The seeds can be fur­ther processed as raw ma­te­r­ial for the cos­met­ics in­dus­try. For this process, the oil is pressed out of the pips. The re­main­ing mat­ter and the pome­gran­ate peel are used for an­i­mal feed and fer­tiliser for or­ganic fields.

Biotta val­ues long-term re­la­tion­ships through­out the en­tire value chain. This al­lows the farm­ers to plan bet­ter over the long term and guar­an­tees ac­cep­tance at fair con­di­tions. Per­sonal con­tact is there­fore cru­cial. The or­chards and pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties are known to us and are reg­u­larly vis­ited by the man­age­ment and/​or pur­chas­ing man­agers. We main­tain close con­tact with the grow­ers to al­low us to dis­cuss sea­sonal fluc­tu­a­tions and other chal­lenges.