iTi Tropicals Inc. (iTi), Lawrenceville, N.J., announced the opening of a new passion fruit production facility in Vietnam. The new facility, operated by passion fruit industry leader Quicornac, offers iTi customers greater flexibility in budgeting, expanded product offerings, stability of production, increased availability, diversity in applications and more.
“Quicornac and iTi have been in partnership to bring passion fruit to the U.S. market for 32 years,” said Gert van Manen, president and founder of iTi Tropicals, in a statement. “We first started with the plant in Ecuador, opened in 1989. Then, in 2008, Quicornac opened their plant in Peru and now a new plant in Vietnam to further diversify the sourcing. This helps mitigate environmental concerns and crop fluctuations, providing our customers with the supply confidence they need.”
The smaller, sweeter purple passion fruit functions as an additional alternative to bakery, jams and jelly applications, providing a broad spectrum of flavors and taste, the company says. This new facility expands upon iTi’s current supply, increasing overall availability of both yellow and purple passion fruit.
“We’re excited to work closely with our customers on developing and showcasing new passionfruit- based formulations, flavors and product line extensions,” said iTi’s in-house Innovation Technologist, Kyra Appleby in a statement.
The new production plant in Vietnam is committed to the same level of food safety and product excellence as iTi’s sister plants in Peru and Ecuador. This includes technical requirements such as BRC third-party safety audit and process validations. The Vietnam facility offers the same level of excellence and state-of-the-art processing.
iTi's passion fruit is available in single-strength juice and 50 Brix concentrate from all three regions.
