Fruit Powders

Kanegrade is proud to produce a wide range of Fruit Powders. They are used in hundreds of applications including plant based foods, confectionery, sauces, protein mixes, fillings and many more. Consumer interest in plant based products is at an all time high with many people choosing a plant based diet. The main reasons being it can be better for your health, it can assist in losing weight, it is a good diet variation, it’s good for the environment and it can save you money. A plant based diet is usually made up of foods which come from plants, which includes fruit powders.

These are fine, normally highly soluble powders with long shelf life, making them ideal for use in food manufacturing.

Spray-dried Fruit Powders

Spray-drying can be used to create a powder from fruit juice. The juice is normally concentrated and pasteurised, mixed with a carrier to ensure stable drying and then fed into the spray-dryer. The mixture is then pumped through a tiny nozzle and into a heated chamber with a vortex of hot air. This causes rapid evaporation of the water in the mixture, resulting in the fruit powder to be collected at the outlet.

Roller / Drum / Belt-dried Fruit Powders

The most basic type of fruit powder. In this process fruit is passed along a set of rollers through a heated chamber (Roller-Drier), tumbled in a heated drum chamber (Drum-drier) or passed along a belt conveyor through a heated chamber (Belt-drier). This high-temperature process removes as much of the water as possible, and then the dehydrated fruits are milled/ ground/ crushed into a fine powder.

Vacuum-dried Fruit Powders

This is a more specialist way of producing a fruit powder, which avoids exposure to high-temperature. The fruit are dried in a similar way to the roller/ belt/ drum, however as a batch process in a sealed vacuum-chamber. The vacuum lowers the boiling point of water to around 30°C, meaning a lower temperature is required to evaporate the water from the fruit. The resulting fruit can then be milled/ ground/ crushed into a powder. This is suited to temperature-sensitive fruits, and whilst more expensive, it’s less harsh on the fruit preserving more flavour.

Freeze-dried Fruit Powders

Freeze-drying is a batch process, which takes place in a sealed chamber. The fruit is frozen and then the pressure is gradually reduced, which makes the water in the fruit jump directly from the solid phase (ice) straight to the gas phase (vapour). This is a process known as ‘sublimation’. The water vapour is free to leave the fruit, resulting in highly dehydrated fruit with the integrity fully maintained. As before this fruit can then be milled/ ground/ crushed into a powder. This is an expensive process resulting in the highest price fruit powder but arguably most preserved.

How to choose?

Each fruit has a particular process from each of the above which suits it the most and is most commonly used. This decision is based on a blend of reasons including: feasibility of manufacture, cost, quality of final product required. To find out which process from above is used for the fruit powder you need, then please enquire.

Note: not all fruit powders are pure fruit solids, many have carriers so consist of a proportion of fruit solids along with a proportion of carrier. The carrier can have multiple roles including: maintaining shelf life, facilitating use in application, anti-caking. Carriers are processing aids and therefore do not have to be declared on labels (EU Law).

Our range contains over 30 fruits with our most popular being the following:

• Lemon Powder
• Lime Powder
• Orange Powder
• Apple Powder
• Raspberry Powder

Other fruit powders Kanegrade can offer are: