Valio’s Hedelmätarha waste apple juice was sold at a higher price than juice made from organic apples.
Waste apple is a more expensive raw material than organic apple. Adobe Stock / AOP
Iltalehti’s reader wondered why the price of a liter of Valio Hedelmätarha waste apple juice (€3.13/l) is higher than the price of a liter of organic apple juice of the same brand (€2.47/l). Of course, prices vary depending on the store.
According to common sense, which of the lower-quality wasted apples costs more? We asked Valio about it.
According to Valio’s communications, waste raw material has many similar collection and processing steps as conventional raw material, but collection and processing may be more expensive than usual. Collecting waste sometimes has to be done from a wider area and a smaller amount at a time.
The size of the purchased batch of raw materials and the size of the manufacturing batch also affect the production costs of a liter of juice.
The production of Hedelmätarha waste apple juice, which entered the market in autumn 2021, has been stopped in this batch.
According to Valio, the product has been discontinued since the beginning of April, but stores may still have the last production batches in their warehouses.
Valio’s communication assures that genuine leftover apples were used in the waste juice, which would have gone to waste or ended up in the compost.
The wasted apples were mainly from Austria. There have not been enough domestic waste apples available to make waste juice from domestic fruits. The same applies to all Valio apple juices, the availability of domestic apples is not enough for large production quantities.