Manjimup passionfruit farmers turning second-grade fruit into highly sought after home grown pulp

Two innovative South West farmers are turning second-grade fruit into gold after building the State’s first on-farm passionfruit pulping facility. And it is helping local growers reduce “waste” and get more value from their crops. When Manjimup’s Mitchell East and Jennifer Riseley began growing passionfruit on Mr East’s family farm six years ago, a significant percentage never made it to the supermarket. Fruit that did not make the cut due to the skin’s appearance — which was about 30 per cent — was sold as seconds or fed to the sheep, despite the fruit inside being “perfectly fine”. Frustrated, they came up with a plan to use it, which has seen it go from “seconds” to “sought after”. The duo decided to establish a processing facility on-farm, through which they could extract the pulp from the fruit, which could then be stored frozen and sold as is or to other processors to add value to their products. “WA’s quite small in the passionfruit industry, the reason for that is it’s quite labour intensive and Queensland produces a lot and we generally can’t compete with their production levels,” Mr East said. “The beauty of this system is we can process it and store it for 12 months so it gives us that versatility to hold on to it and not flood the market.” With a vision to minimise waste, they sourced parts of unused machines to build the apparatus — which washes the fruit before it gets pulped — dubbing it the “Mad Max” set-up. “We set out to find already available things that other people had and didn’t want or things that we had from previous operations or things we were doing on the farm,” Mr East said. “Parts of this machinery is from an onion grader that we used to have, there’s bits from a potato grader, an avocado-washing section and then the pulper, we were fortunate enough to buy from an old couple that didn’t need it anymore.” “The funny thing was, the panels, we ended up trading a 93 land cruiser wagon for them, so still managed to utilise something that we had,” he laughed. They began processing in 2019, with the first of the pair’s pulp hitting shelves and making its way to Monkey Rock Winery and Cidery in Denmark — where it is used to make passionfruit cider — ice-creameries and cake shops in 2020. Demand has grown, with the pair teaming up with two other local growers to keep up and trialling their own products — sold under the Willarra Gold label — including a cordial. “That way they’re not dumping anything and they’re actually getting some return for their product, as we all know it costs as much to produce your second-grade as it does your premium grade. “Farmers need to get paid for their efforts. The assumption is that if you create products from waste it’s cheaper, but the reality is it’s not.” “Even though we produce our product with what is essentially waste, it’s still a premium product. “Passionfruit is a good example — the skin is what makes them a second but you don’t eat the skin, to eat the inside. “The inside is perfectly fine, it’s still premium.” As interest in WA produce continues to rise, with other cideries keen to get their hands on the pulp, the pair are looking to team up with more growers so more businesses in the food and beverage industry could swap imported pulp for a home-grown alternative. “At the moment we have orders that we can't fill,” Mr East said. “Most of the syrups and concentrates you find that have been added to Australian manufactured products are imported from Ecuador or Vietnam.”