Fruit concentrate travels in one of three formats, and the choice is made on volume and on what the receiving site can physically handle, not on quality grounds.
Frozen drums
Steel or fibre drums with a food-grade liner, frozen and moved in a reefer. This is the traditional format for high-acid concentrates and for purees, and it is robust: a frozen drum tolerates a long journey and a slow chain far better than a chilled or ambient equivalent. The cost is at the receiving end, because the buyer needs thawing capacity, drum handling equipment and space to hold drums while they temper.
Aseptic bag-in-box
A sterile multilayer bag inside a carton, cage or drum, filled aseptically after a heat treatment and shipped at ambient. This is now the dominant format for concentrate moving into beverage manufacturing. It removes the reefer and the thawing step, and it lets the buyer open a bag straight into a line. The integrity of the bag and the fitment is the whole game: a single pinhole is a spoiled unit, so buyers should ask about fill validation and post-fill integrity checking rather than assuming the format is self-guaranteeing. The aseptic bag-in-box entry covers the mechanics.
Flexitank and bulk aseptic
For very large volumes on a single destination, a flexitank or a bulk aseptic liner inside a container carries a full load in one unit. It is the lowest handling cost per tonne and the least flexible: one destination, one product, one specification, and a receiving site with bulk intake capability.
What travels with the load regardless of format
Contact-material documentation is the item most often missing. Liners, bags and fitments fall under Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004 and, for plastics, Regulation (EU) No 10/2011, and the declaration of compliance belongs with the packaging supplier’s paperwork, not with the fruit. Alongside it: the certificate of analysis with the Brix reported against a stated temperature and method, the lot traceability record, and, where the load is frozen, the temperature record for the journey.
Delivery terms should be agreed against a current Incoterms rule and stated in full, because the point at which risk transfers determines who owns a temperature failure. The concentrate sourcing guide covers the commercial parameters, and the logistics section covers the corridors.