The skill of picking apples for juice is all about timing it just right, so the apples are mature enough for flavour but not to ripe otherwise there’s not much juice left in the apple.
The apples are hand picked and then put into a cold store until they are just ready.
When ready, they are brought into our converted original Norfolk barn where they are pressed and bottled ready for sale. The pulp that’s left over is fed to the Sandringham Farm’s Red Poll Cattle.
8 different varieties of apple are grown on the royal Sandringham estate, they arrive in the processing plant and are first washed in the water baths.
The apples are then pushed through a ‘cheese grater’ to turn the apples into a pulp. The pulp then drops into a trough where compressed air pushes the juice out into a tray at the bottom of the machine. The juice is then pumped into large storage tanks where the juice is kept over night.
The next day the juice is then ready to be bottled…
The juice is pumped to the bottling machine where the juice is put into the bottles and then placed into the pasteurisers. In the pasteurisers the bottles are put into water at 72 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes which kills the bacteria and stops the apple juice from fermenting.
Once pasteurised, the bottles are then stored ready for labelling when required.
When in full production the processing plant can produce 2,500 bottles of apple juice a day. A typical year’s harvest will produce 50,000 750ml bottles of apple juice and 20,000 of the smaller 250ml bottles a year.
Andrew M Jarvis Ltd (t/as Sandringham Apple Juice)
Registered address: The Juice Plant, Flitcham Hall, Barns Flitcham, King’s Lynn Norfolk PE31 6BY
Registered in England & Wales: 08419606
VAT No. GB 158 4550 90
