Sugarcane Juice in Nepal

When you go to the terai belt of Nepal in summer, you will see a pool of people in the roadside junctions drinking the immediately prepared sugarcane juice. Available in different flavours and mixes, sugarcane juice is the most popular soft drinks in the southern nepal.

Preparation of the juice is a simple. The juice maker uses a simple machine which takes the raw sugar canes as the input and then crushes it to make the juice. The juice is then treated with different flavors before serving it to the customer. The most popular flavors are the “Birenun”(Rocksalt) and “Mint”(Pudhina), while some drinkers prefer unflavored juice. Interestingly, since the juice is prepared at the roadsides 'Ice-Cubes' are put into the juice to make it colder. 

 (Boy making instant sugarcane juice at a park.) Image credit: Google

Sugarcane juice is preferred for immediate consumption while the storage of juice and its commercialisation is still left untouched. In the ktm valley, people go to the fruit shop to drink sugarcane juice which also includes the patients, particularly the jaundice patients. With the invention of sugarcane juice preserving technology by Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, the future in this segment seems to be promising. The technology allows the juice to be preserved up to a duration of six months. The process of preserving the sugarcane juice involves peeling, crushing, filtration, pasteurization and bottling. Sodium Benzoate and Ammonium Hydroxide is added as preservative. The bottled juice can be stored without any loss in the quality and flavour for six months at room temperature.

When it comes to nutritious product, even the middle class people give more weight to quality than the price. Since the quality of real juice, the no. 1 juice market leader, is questioned with many controversies one can easily tap into this market with a quality product.