Remo Trovato (left) of Vernon is the proud owner of this Mobile Juicing portable unit which can turn a large variety of fruit into fruit juice in a matter of minutes. Trovato recently visited the farm of local apple grower Ajit Saran and produced hundreds of litres of apple juice. (Keith Lacey photo)
A South Okanagan business owner has introduced a revolutionary mobile juicing machine that turns apples and other fruit into tasty, pasteurized juice in a matter of minutes.
Remo Trovato, 40, is the proud owner of Mobile Juicing, based in Vernon.
For the past several weeks, Trovato and his small crew of workers have spent most of their time working with fruit farmers in the Osoyoos and Oliver area.
Since purchasing his mobile juicing company at a trade show in Germany last year, Trovato has been kept very busy turning fruit into fruit juice at farms across the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys.
MobileJuicing.com is a locally owned and operated mobile apple, cherry and berry juicing trailer, making great tasting juice from your fruit. His service provides customers with pasteurized, packaged juices, ready for resale or personal use, he said.
The high-tech, certified organic, European-engineered mobile juicing machine travels to Vernon, Kelowna, Penticton, Oliver, Osoyoos, the rest of the Okanagan Valley and beyond and is capable of processing over 500 litres of juice per hour.
He uses convenient Bag-in-Box packaging for optimal storage, preservation and low-energy consumption, said Trovato.
“With our mobile juice trailer, we can now also de-stone and process cherries as well as juice berries and other soft fruit.
Finally, he added a bottling line to our mobile juice machine so we can fill your juice into bottles,” he said.
Trovato was born and raised in Switzerland and moved to Canada 12 years ago and ended up in Vernon as that’s where his wife is from. They met while on vacation in New Zealand several years ago.
“Mobile juicing is a concept that has been around for many years in Europe, but it’s very new to Canada,” said Trovato, who owned his own website design company in Vernon for more than a decade before selling the business to purchase his mobile juicing equipment.
“I’ve been in the Okanagan Valley for about 12 years now and just love it here and I was looking at different business opportunities,” he said. “I owned my own web design business and was getting tired of all the long hours.
“We did our research and I just loved the concept of a mobile unit that could turn all of the fruit we produce here in the Okanagan into fruit juice.”
You almost have to see it to believe how quickly the mobile juicing unit can turn a large bin of cull apples into pasteurized juice.
“From the time you load the apples into the cleaning machine until the time it’s turned into juice and packed and bagged it just over three minutes,” said Trovato.
The mobile juicing unit works on numerous varieties of fruit, including apples, cherries, blueberries, raspberries and pears.
In order to speed up the process and expand the different kinds of fruit he could process and pasteurize with his unit, Trovato had to purchase two expensive, specialized pieces of equipment this year, including a belt press, which allows the fruit to be mashed and juice separated very quickly, he said.
Another piece of machinery can dig out the pits of cherries and remove the core of other fruit in a matter of seconds.
In two short years, Mobile Juicing has more than 100 clients, including dozens in the Osoyoos and Oliver area, said Trovato.
“Everything we produce is certified by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency,” he said.
Because there’s only a short period of time to harvest fruit in the Okanagan Valley, Trovato admits he works from very long hours from late summer to late fall.
“We only have a 40 to 60-day season for most fruit and a little longer now that we can do berries,” he said. “It often means starting up our equipment early in the morning and going until 9 or 10 at night and then often another hour or two to clean up to get ready for the next morning.”
As the father of a five-month-old son, Trovato said he doesn’t mind the long hours as he can take time after harvest is finished to spend time with his wife Kirsten and his baby and pursue his passion of skiing. He and his wife are ski instructors at Silver Star in Vernon during the winter months.
Trovato recently did a job at the farm of Ajit Saran between Oliver and Osoyoos. He had nine bins of apples turned into 400 boxes of apple juice in one day of business.
Anyone wanting more information about Trovato’s business can visit his website at www.mobilejuicing.com.
KEITH LACEY
Osoyoos Times
