As Ivan Tominac/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, health, they say, is the greatest wealth one can have, and nutrition is an important part of our daily lives that allows us to have better health and an easier time in general, both physically and mentally.
The Zagreb company Take Natural Juice is also producing a healthier alternative to fruit juices, and a conversation with the owner Sanja Dajak Matanovic revealed the fact that everything started out with a family that deciced to switch to a more healthy lifestyle more than ten years ago.
It started with the opening of a concept store with a professional kitchen in which these juices were produced, and after receiving good feedback from their customers, the whole concept took on new proportions and became a business that the whole family is very proud of.
Health and improving the quality of life were, therefore, the main motives for starting the business behind the Zagreb company Take Natural Juice.
“We offer cold-pressed juices without the addition of sugar, artificial sweeteners, water, colour enhancers, preservatives and a kind of chemistry in general. We currently offer six types of standardised cold-pressed juices (fresh and short-term pasteurised), two types of lemonades, three types of wellness shooters and four types of smoothies,” explained Dajak Matanovic.
Given that this business story exceeded their expected results, investments were a logical sequence of activities, and although they had inquiries about the sale of shares in the company, nothing like that is in their focus at the moment. An investment of 10,000 euros was spent on equipping a professional kitchen, as well as on obtaining basic professional furniture and machinery. According to Dajak Matanovic, the plan is to withdraw funds from EU funds in the next step.
“Our juices are all cold pressed from first class vegetables and fruits and retain up to 25 percent of their fiber. Our fresh juices have a shelf life of five days, which is achieved by perfect microbiology and extreme caution and hygienic perfectionism in the production process. The pasteurised juices are processed by the method of fast pasteurisation (HTST) which allows a shelf life of up to two months, depending on the glass or plastic packaging, but the juices still belong to the fresh product category,” said the owner of the Zagreb company Take Natural Juice.
All of the conditions that need to be met in order for their juices to be called healthy are, as he pointed out, the challenges they face in production. Each step in production takes months of reading, researching and searching for options for machines and production means. While difficult, they’re successfully coping with this.
Most of their raw materials come from domestic producers and distributors, but depending on the season and what is available, they sometimes do go beyond the borders of Croatia to get their hands on good raw materials.
“There’s no small supplier or family farm that could supply us with a sufficient amount of necessary raw materials all year round, but we have a successful and long cooperation with some of them. Organic chokeberry, for example, comes from Croatia all year round, it’s more or less the same for apples too, but the origin of the oranges we use depends on the season, and for example, pineapple, ginger and similar foods, which aren’t grown in our climate, are regularly imported.
We use first class vegetables and fruits in our production, and any visible damage to any of it is physically removed. Only completely healthy foods enter the juices,” added Dajak Matanovic.
Their entire production is currently located in Zagreb, in the western part of the city, and their production facilities extend in size to 120 square metres. They have no stocks or long-term storage, they’re very flexible and they have adapted their team to that, which varies from 5 to 10 people per shift, depending on the size of their orders.
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