13 Jan  2010 --- Hefestus, Israel, will launch at Fruit logistic, its automatic packaging-system solution for cleanly separating pomegranate peel from arils and separating the individual pomegranate seeds. This advanced technology allows beverage producers to squeeze fresh, delicious — and super-trendy — pomegranate juice from just the arils.

Pomegranates can be consumed as a whole fruit, ready-to-eat arils and as juice. Nevertheless, the fruit is hard to process since peeling and deseeding the arils from the fruit is complicated and expensive for consumers and manufactures. Following the successful launching of its ready-to-eat pomegranate packaging solution last year, Hefestus is proud to introduce a comprehensive solution for separating pomegranate seeds from the peel in an automatic process that enables beverage producers to easily extract the juice from the arils, yielding one of the most popular and most delicious superfruit juices, yet without bitterness typical to juices derived from the whole fruit.

“Traditionally, processors squeeze pomegranate juice out in various ways including squeezing the juice with the peel, which cause a bitter taste due to the highly concentrated tannins in the peel and pith,” explains Oded Shtemer, President & CEO of Hefestus. “Using Hefestus’ proprietary technology, the manufactures are able to increase the natural taste of the pomegranate drink. The automatic process also shortens production time significantly while sharply lowering labor costs.”

Hefestus, Ltd., specializes in providing advanced solutions for extending shelf-life of fresh cut fruits and vegetables via its "SLB technology (Shelf Life Booster). It develops and manufactures a wide variety of standard and custom-made top-sealing packaging machines, from manual to fully automatic lines, to meet the complex packaging requirements of processors and consumers.