Partnership Brings Benefits of Welchs Grape Juice to Food Products

Welch’s and Taura Natural Ingredients partnered to create inclusions produced from Welch’s Concord Grape Juice and Purée, which will be available to manufacturers of food products such as nutrition bars, confectionery, bakery products and breakfast cereals.

To be marketed as FruitWorx^®, the new inclusions will provide the taste and other attributes of the Concord Grape for which Welch’s range of premium juices are famous. As noted in INSIDER’s Digital Issues, “Form and Function," by Sandy Almendarez, taste is a critical component in both functional food and beverage products. Inclusions can positively impact both flavor and texture of a product, and in some cases, improve nutrition, too.

Under the terms of the deal, Taura Natural Ingredients will create concentrated pieces and pastes from Welch’s Concord Grape Juice and Purée using its URC^® (ultra rapid concentration) process. Developed by Taura Natural Ingredients, URC is a unique process of concentrating the taste, texture and other natural qualities of fruit into pieces, flakes and pastes for use in a wide range of formats—either alone or in combination with other fruits, and blended with grains including ancient grains such as chia.

FruitWorx pieces and pastes will be sold exclusively through both companies. Initially, FruitWorx will be available to the North American, Japanese and South Korean markets, with other geographies set to follow later.

The agreement represents a significant technological development. The slip skin and large seeds of the Concord Grape make it difficult to use as an inclusion. However, using Taura Natural Ingredients’ technology to create FruitWorx allows food manufacturers to include Welch’s Concord Grape Juice and Purée pieces in applications such as confectionery, cereals and bars.

“Welch’s Concord Grape Juice products are widely known, enjoyed and trusted by millions of consumers and now, at last, food manufacturers can leverage this brand equity by using FruitWorx^® inclusions in their own products," said Richard Croad, COO and president of Taura North America.