As A Tropical Country, Indonesia Has The Potential To Dominate The World Fruit Juice Drink Market

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The government through the Ministry of Industry (Kemenperin) explained that as a tropical country, Indonesia has great potential in developing fruit-based industries such as fruit juice drinks, canned fruit products, candied fruit, jams and others.

The Director General of Agro Industry at the Ministry of Industry, Putu Juli Ardika, said this was in line with the downstream industry policy to increase the added value of domestic commodities while supporting the import substitution program.

“Indonesia is one of the largest fresh fruit producing countries in the world with production reaching 24.9 million tons per year. Based on world fruit map data, Indonesia ranks 8th in the world," he said in a press statement, Sunday, December 26.

According to Putu, the development of the fruit processing industry in the country is still prospective in the future. This means that the opportunities for the upstream sector need to be optimized by encouraging the growth of intermediate and downstream industries.

“The demand for the downstream industrial sector for fresh fruit is still very high, because the market demand, especially in the domestic market, is also still very high. For this reason, it is necessary to strengthen the role of the intermediate industry that produces fruit concentrate or puree as a producer of raw materials for the downstream industry," he said.

For information, currently in Indonesia there are six fruit processing industries between small and medium scale, with a total production capacity of 5,500 tons per year. Meanwhile, in the downstream sector, there are 41 companies with a total production capacity of 430,000 tons per year which have contributed to foreign exchange through their total export value of 280 million US dollars.

"We are currently focusing on suppressing imports of intermediate products, by contributing to boosting the quality of local fresh fruit and increasing productivity in the upstream sector as well as encouraging capacity building for the intermediate industry, including continuing to empower the role of cooperatives as partners in the fruit processing industry," he explained.

Putu added that a number of strategic steps need to be taken to improve the performance of the fruit processing industry, including managing productivity stability and supply of raw materials, providing regional infrastructure to make logistics costs more efficient.

"We also encourage the fruit processing industry to adopt digital technology in its production process so that it can increase its capacity and competitiveness. Moreover, the fruit processing industry and product diversification have begun to develop, with the addition of nutrients and various vitamins to these products," said Putu.