Trade Winds Citrus Limited, makers of Tru-Juice, is taking aim at a more ambitious market in North America, with a range of juices launched last week under a new label that depicts the country's national bird to immediately define the product as Jamaican, though it is being bottled overseas.

"The new products come under a new Tru-Juice logo depicting a humming bird and the slogan of Jamaica," the company said in response to Wednesday Business queries.

Mark McConnell, a director of Trade Winds, said Tru-Juice has been sold overseas for the past four years, but on a small scale.

With the $4.5-million investment in new packaging - the product will be sold in 473-millilitre or 16-ounce bottles - Trade Winds hopes to double overseas sales, he said, from the 1,000 cases per month that were done from Jamaica.

Shipping costs

Trade Winds has partnered with an unnamed Philadelphia firm to bottle and distribute eleven export flavours - Valencia orange juice, Jamaican sorrel with ginger, soursop, Jamaican june plum with ginger, pineapple juice, mango and Jamaican carrot, mango orange pineapple, orange pineapple, acerola cherry, and guava pineapple - but said most of the raw material will be sourced from Jamaican farms.

"What we are doing is sending all the Jamaican ingredients and raw materials to be bottled by a distributor based in Philadelphia," said McConnell, noting that this was meant to cut back on shipping costs.

But such an arrangement would likely help Tru-Juice get around any phytosanitary regulations that food exports must hurdle, and places the final product closer to its end market, mitigating against spoilage.

Tru-Juice is sold in Toronto, Canada, and New York, Washing-ton and South Florida in the United States.

"Everything is bottled in Philadelphia and sent from there into those markets," he added.

The target is Caribbean nationals.

Exports is "an area of growth for us," even though "the competition is stiffer," McConnell said.

"The first batch that we sent out has been received well and already we have orders to double that amount."

The company is market testing in other US states, and plans to expand distribution to places like Atlanta and California.

dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com