Biofach 2025: Very Berry on functional drinks, cold-press juices, and sustainable packaging
10 Mar 2025 | Very Berry
Ilze Sauškina, marketing and export manager of Very Berry, talked about the company’s journey from growing cranberries to becoming a leading juice provider at Biofach 2025. She explained how its functional drinks, like Omm for relaxation and Athletic for recovery, made with scientists, combine pure berry juices with herbal teas for optimal health benefits. Sauškina also shared the advantages of cold-press and flow pasteurization for preserving nutrients and taste and how the company plans to maintain its focus on sustainability with the upcoming launch of organic lemonades in cans.
So hello and welcome to Nutrition Insights interview.
My name is Vina Patel and I'm a senior journalist at Nutrition Insight, and I'm so happy to have you, have you here today.
Can you please introduce yourself and what you're presenting here?
Hi, my name is Ilse.
I'm from company Briberry from Latvia.
We are berry growers and natural juice producers from Latvia, and here we are in Vofa in Latvian national san.
Very nice.
My first question.
So why did you choose to grow cranberries first, and how has that helped your business over the years?
Our first thing that we started our business was growing the berries.
In the beginning it was just a berry business and then it involved in the juice manufacturing company.
Why we chose cranberry is because at that point, it was in 1997, the cultivated cranberry was not a known berry in Latvia, and we saw a huge potential in that, and we had to spend some time introducing the berry, teaching about the health benefits of it, so it took time, but now it's even more popular than the wild cranberry, and we count this as a success in general.
And so your functional drinks claim to help with health.
So what makes them work and how do you prove it?
Yeah, functional drinks, these ones were developed together with the local scientists, with a professor who concentrates more on the herbs and natural medicine.
And so the recipes were developed together with her, and the main ingredient is vitamin C or iron or magnesium.
It depends on the product itself, which does the functional part of it, and also the berries themselves.
For example, the drink Om has a cherry in it, which is known for calming the.
Nervous system and helping you to fall asleep.
So there is some science underneath that and also not all of them is kind of proven.
It's still some of them count as like a gray area in EU law, but we are working towards that to acknowledge all of the ingredients that are used in these products.
You use cold press and flow pasteurization for your juices, and how is this better for nutrients and taste compared to other methods?
We believe strongly that the fruit has all what you need in it.
We are using ourselves integrated growing this system, I would say, and we try to preserve all that nature gives the fruit, and culture, press technology, and mild pasteurization preserves all of the naturally occurring vitamins in it.
And minerals, so we try to preserve that.
That is what we believe in because in other methods you take away something and then you artificially give it back.
We try to keep it as natural as possible to keep all that nature gives you.
And I hear you are planning to make organic lemonades in cans.
So how will you keep your focus on sustainability when using these cans?
Definitely, definitely, yes.
The one issue as we are in Latvia, Latvia is not a huge market, so of course we are looking towards export.
It will be better.
Transportation wise and also the material, the aluminum cans that we are using, they are the most sustainable packaging material there is next to the glass that we use now.
So this is our next big project in next year.
Thank you so much for your insights and sharing what's happening.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming by.
