Adelaide Showgrounds Farmers Market producers – Fruitwise

FRUITWISE

Anyone who has ever unpacked a child’s schoolbag at the end of the week (or worse, at the end of the holidays) knows what they are going to find lurking in the dark depths of a backpack.  If it is only a few withered apples or an orange or two, you are in luck, because there is not much nastier to plunge your hands into than a couple of soft, mushy, blackened bananas!  Most of us try to give our kids a relatively healthy school lunch and that always includes a piece of fruit, or two, but there are plenty of kids out there who occasionally don’t get around to eating them.  While there are “big brand” dried fruit sticks and fruit leathers available in the stores that are often more attractive than fruit to children, they are generally made with the added sugars, colours and preservatives that we are advised to minimise in our kids diets.  But one local producer is marketing a fruit leather that we can feel very happy about putting in the lunchboxes.

About  ten years ago a man called Peter Bennett became so frustrated about additives in things like dried fruits and fruit leathers that he decided to have a go at making them himself.  Using a home dehydrating unit he began to experiment, taking his successes into work for his colleagues.  His experiments proved popular with his workmates and, realising that he was on to something, he bought a few more of the dehydrators and set about trying to make fruit straps commercially.  While his product was good, Bennett’s process was inefficient – both in time and energy – as he found himself running 50 domestic dehydrators.  After some personal difficulties he sold the business on to some of his investors and it is now owned and run by Pam Beal, operating out of a workshop in the old Lobethal woollen mills here in South Australia.

Pam and her staff of 10 locals now produce a healthy lunchbox snack that is free of all artificial additives.  Each strap is equivalent to a whole piece of fruit, but Pam stresses that they are not a replacement for fresh fruit – more a convenient, easily transportable and storable version for snacking.  Gone are the power-guzzling domestic units and in their place is a modern dehydrating system which uses one fifth of the energy of the old system.  It also leaves the fruit straps moist and chewy, but not tough, and full of their natural flavour and colour.  Pam uses local Adelaide Hills apple pulp in all of the straps, adding the pulp of differing fruits to achieve the different flavour varieties and they are all made and packed in Lobethal.

Fruitwise snacks are becoming a growing success story, being available in all independent supermarkets and Coles stores.  They are also now being exported to the UK, New Zealand, Singapore, the US and China.  Incredibly, this success has come in spite of no advertising at all!  Pam has been selling her products at the Adelaide Showgrounds Farmers Market since its inception and feels that being able to speak to the consumers on a one-to-one basis is the most important marketing that she can do.

There is a great deal of hard work behind this business.  Pam, who was suddenly widowed two years ago, has found the very long hours that she puts in have helped her through what was an extremely difficult time and she is justifiably proud of her product and what she has achieved with her business.   So next time you go looking for lunchbox fillers, bypass the big brands and support  a local – make sure you try out this  exceptional local Adelaide Hills product!

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