A presentation highlighting product safety and quality for Thai fruit juice industry

Fruit juice industry in Thailand is enjoying a fruitful tree climbing rate with a total market of Baht 12,000 million in 2014. The last year’s total growth rate is at 13 percent.

Napaporn Rattanametta, a Project Manager on Food Safety for ASEAN Sustainable Agrifood Systems Project started her presentation with these facts and figures at the “Seminar on EU Import Control and Food Safety Management at the border: Case study at Frankfurt International Airport” on 25 May 2015 in Nonthaburi, Thailand.

Participants consisted of officials from central and regional agencies, manufacturers, small and medium size exporters roughly about 100 persons.

Her 45-minute session focused on “Improving Product Safety and Quality for Thai Fruit Juice Industry”. A slide after slide in her presentation showed quite shocking pictures of the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ of the fruit juice factories before and after her advisory assistances. Areas to be improved, for example, included fresh fruit quality, fruit washing machine, personal hygiene, plant hygiene, contamination risk reduction and maintenance programme.

She also presented the ASEAN Sustainable Agrifood Systems Project’s market survey results on Thai fruit juice in 2012 and 2014. As a result for declared “100 % Guava juice”, only approximately 40 per cent of juice content could be detected in the analysed sample. Meanwhile, in the sample “100 % strawberry” only 20 per cent juice content could be detected.  Having been working in the fruit juice industry for over 12 years, Ms. Rattanametta has carried fruit juice factory inspections in a number of factories and conducted training and skill development programmes for fruit juice factory staff across Thailand and Vietnam.

Ms. Napaporn is also a certified auditor for Sure Global Fair (SGF), a global voluntary certification system for fruit processing industry based in Germany.

SGF and the ASEAN Sustainable Agrifood Systems Project under Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) or German International Cooperation in English are supporting the Thai fruit juice industry in a private partnership project “Improved Product Safety and Quality for the Thai Fruit Juice Industry” in its efforts to comply with the requirements of the international market. The common objective is to increase safety and quality of Thai fruit juice products in accordance with national and international recognized standards, for example: assure legal and industrial safety and quality standards; maintain fair competition; support the positive reputation of healthy and natural fruit juice products; and ensure consumer satisfaction.

By Rojana Manowalailao, ASEAN Sustainable Agrifood Systems