Founder and CEO of New Zealand avocado business Ovavo, Andrew Vivian was looking to upcycle the fruit “not pretty enough” to sell. The result is a highly versatile freeze-dried avocado powder with multiple applications. Kim Berry writes.
In the Northland region of New Zealand’s North Island, avocado grower Andrew Vivian had a problem: producing almost 10million avocados a year, with between five to 10 per cent classified process grade or not fit for sale.
“That’s upwards of a million pieces of fruit, so it’s not insignificant. For growers, the only way to really get any value out of process grade fruit is to sell it to oil manufacturers but you are still lucky if you get a dollar per kilogram for that, which is well under cost.
“It is also a massive waste of perfectly good fruit. So, my remit was to look at how we could upcycle the fruit, and not just the flesh, but also what could we do with the skin and the stone,” Vivian says.
Vivian’s background is in the beverage industry, working with Innocent Drinks in the UK. With that history, the Ovavo team initially were thinking about fresh fruit smoothies, but as they learnt more about the fruit, that evolved into considering a freeze-dried powder.
“If you think about how fickle a fresh avocado is, a freeze-dried powder with minimal processing and an ambient shelf life of 12 months is an attractive business idea,” he says.
Vivian decided to target the “constant tension” for food and beverage manufacturers to innovate but still be mainstream enough to be sustainable.
To make the powder, Ovavo has partnered with a local avocado oil manufacturer because of its processing capabilities at separating the flesh from the skin and stone.
The freeze-drying process was more complex due to the high fat content of the fruit. Initially, the company worked for more than a year with the New Zealand government’s research agency Callaghan Innovation to pilot equipment. It then went to freeze dryer manufacturer Fresh As, which used its experience and knowledge to develop the final process.
“The freeze-drying process essentially just evaporates the water from the flesh, so you keep all the benefits of the fibre and nutrients, a lot of the sensory characteristics, and everything that makes avocados one of the most nutritionally complete foods in the world, but in a stable format,” he says.
“You even retain the mouth feel when it is reconstituted. Our research is showing you only need up to five per cent of the powder per serve to get the sensory benefits of fresh avocado.
“Around two tablespoons of powder is equivalent to a whole large avocado, the only difference being it will last in ambient storage for a year. There are sustainability benefits to that as well,” he says.
For a food or beverage manufacturer, you are going to be saving on storage, transport, and energy costs. Also – for food developers, water is not your friend, but oil is. We have a powder that is 70 per cent fat with very low water activity. That makes it an easier product to play around with,” Vivian says.
A major appeal is the powder’s versatility, being able to pair with other ingredients for many different meal or snack occasions.
Ovavo is also working with the Food Technology department at Massey University, the leading food tech centre in New Zealand, to develop prototypes. Vivian says the goal is to cover off on applications from a technical perspective so manufacturers can focus on branding.
The company is also working with Julian Mellentin at New Nutrition Business in the UK to find the best distribution partners and export markets for the powder.
Mellentin compares the potential for avocados to the trajectory almonds took from simply being a nut to a functional ingredient.
“Julian predicts it will be the next super-food ingredient; we are really excited about its potential,” Vivian says.
“We brought the proposition to market late last year. We are still pre-revenue because of lead time in terms of fitting in with R&D schedules, product development, and then supermarket ranging, but we have well over a hundred businesses we're currently engaged with, and some pretty big ones at that, across more than a dozen categories,” he says.
The company made the strategic decision to focus on the B2B functional ingredient channel, but Vivian says there is a lot of consumer interest.
“We have set up an ecommerce platform just New Zealand at this stage, but we are more focused on food and beverage manufacturers at this stage,” he says.
Ovavo has signed a deal with one of Australasia’s leading ingredient distributors, Invita, to distribute the product in New Zealand and Australia.
Supply won’t be an issue for Ovavo. The company has established a co-operative with other growers in Northland, which together produce around two million trays of fruit a year.
“If you take five per cent of that, it is about 500 tonnes of process grade fruit, which produces around 110 tonnes of powder,” he says.
Vivian says the company has global aspirations to become the worldwide expert in upcycling avocado.
This article first appeared in the September edition of Food & Drink Business magazine.
