Stone fruits including peaches, apricots, and plums have soft flesh, so they can bruise easily during processing and start to darken once they are cut. Our stone fruit processing lines normally start with washing and sorting, followed by destoning and crushing. Once those processes are finished, the fruit is then made into pulp and refined in a closed section where inert gas is used to reduce contact with oxygen and slow down browning.

After pulping and refining, where skins and coarse solids are removed from the fruit pulp, the pulp moves on to the concentration and sterilization process. Peach and apricot pulp is thick and fibrous, so it does not move through the heating section as easily as a thinner juice. Tubular sterilizers are suitable for processing this type of fruit pulp because they keep the flow more even during heating and reduce the risk of scorching or product build-up on the heated surfaces.