Cherry and berry juice made from Central Otago and Motueka waste fruit has been filling supermarkets all over Australasia - and it’s all made in Alexandra.

Eden Orchards moved its bottling operation from a small site on Boundary Rd to the former Otago Bees factory in Dunstan Rd in December, increasing production to 15,000 bottles a day, from 7500.

Company founders Gary and Steph Bignell originally used waste cherries from their Blenheim orchard back in 2018, and then sold that to buy a berry farm in Motueka as a semi-retirement project.  

Central Otago was the logical choice for making the juice because of the large number of cherry orchards in the south.

The growth over the past 12 months has been huge and their son Cameron now runs the company, based from Sydney, with an office in Auckland as well - employing 15 staff.

But, for four weeks of the year the family get together in Alexandra, overseeing 700 tonne of fruit coming in from 12 different growers.

Employing up to 50 staff in peak season, they have been sending their cherry and cherry/berry juices all over the country - 200 supermarkets now stock it, with a further 100 in Australia.

“That saves a lot of fruit from being dumped,” Gary said. 

"Everybody wants to be part of the sustainability journey.”

Investing in state-of-the art technology, a lot of work has gone into converting the factory to suit their needs.

The family started out selling their juices by attending weekend markets, trade shows and field days every weekend, before hitting social media to target their customers directly.

“Back in the day as a family we did everything. But, if you said that one day we’d be producing 300,000 bottles a season I would’ve said that’s ridiculous,” Steph said.

The company is also involved with the Central Otago District Council (CODC) and Plant & Food Research, as part of its sustainability journey to look at more ways of using waste fruit for the industry.

There’s fruit leather in the mix now and this season they are also trialling frozen pitted cherries. Eventually they will look to partner with another New Zealand company to supply them the fruit for their own products.

A report commissioned by the CODC in 2022 showed about 6000 tonnes or 15% of fruit grown in Central Otago does not end up being consumed, but with Eden Orchards’ innovation that is all about to change.