FRONA - Behind the Brand

If you’ve read any of our Frona Dried Fruit related blogs. You may have learned the advantages of Dehydrated Fruit and various ideas of how to use it. But you still probably don’t know who Frona is. So let me give you a little back story.

Frona as a company was founded in the early 2010s. However it wasn’t until 2022 where the Dried Fruit Cocktail Garnishes started to make their way to the UK market via Drinkstuff.

The company is the brainchild of Eren & Murat, two friends who met while working for Nestle. Both have different skill sets. Eren on the product development side and Murat on procurement and they were heavily involved in Nestle’s snackable products. 

Their initial idea for Frona was mainly to provide dried Fruit for Cereals, Granola and Cereal bars. Think those dried chunks of fruit in many famous cereal brands. Still to this day, a big part of their business is supplying fruit to that part of the food industry.

However, a chance meeting on LinkedIn in 2022 by Lorraine, a Buyer at Drinkstuff, started the relationship that we now have today, and helped us to provide amazing Fruit Cocktail Garnishes to the Bar industry.

In 2022/2023 we started off with the traditional Citrus Fruit. Lemons, Green Lemons (read this Blog to understand the difference), Oranges. And then Apple and Pineapple. But very quickly over the preceding 2 years, with heavy influence from Drinkstuff, Frona have now expanded their Fruit offering to cover most of the major Fruits you could possibly need!

Soon came all the Berries, Grapefruits, Passion Fruits, Watermelon, Coconut, Chilli, Tomato and now Dragon Fruit. And Frona have finished there, because they have more fruits that should be ready in 2025.

Now the hard thing with selling a new range is predicting sales volumes. And the one thing we (Drinkstuff) hadn’t really understood is the timescales involved. In our first 2 years, we hadn’t quite got a handle on Stock quantities, ran out of key limes at crucial times, but just assumed that we could restock from Frona within a few weeks.

It wasn’t until a trip to Turkey in September 2024, where Lorraine, Paul (the Drinkstuff MD) and I actually started to understand how the company worked. And I think it’s fair to say, all three of us were left in awe of what they are trying to do.

So let's break this down…

WHERE IS THE FRUIT GROWN?

Eren and Murat had previously told us that they grow everything in Turkey, but I’m going to speak for myself here for a minute, I’ll admit, I was skeptical. I think I have a decent handle on where fruit is grown in the world, and I never in a million years expected Coconuts, Dragon Fruit, Watermelon and Passion Fruits to grow in Turkey. Being totally honest, I was even really skeptical about Pineapple. I attribute all those fruits to places like the Caribbean, South America and countries like India, Sri Lanka.

How wrong was I…?!!

You’ll see the map below, but as Turkey is a large country, meeting different oceans, and let's be honest, is in a much warmer part of the world to the UK, their various climates, and topography  is actually perfect for growing most varieties of Fruit Citrus is grown down in the south West, off the Aegean Sea. While the Berries up north closer to Istanbul. Apples more central while Coconuts, Passion Fruits and Pineapple more towards the Mid South of the Country.

And as you’ll see from other photos below, yeah, we have evidence of Dragon Fruits being grown near Dalyan!

Now there are a few other crucial nuggets of information here too.

Because now you might begin to understand why we can’t just simply order more Passion Fruit or more Pineapple when we run out. We actually have to predict the sales volumes, so Eren & Murat can actually plant enough Trees in their Orchards, to cope with demand.

And I know the follow up question…

WHY CAN’T THEY SIMPLY JUST BUY MORE IN?!

Well in some cases they do. But it’s not quite as straightforward as that. Which leads on to the second vital nugget of information. As an Organic Fruit company, they’ll only source fruit from orchards where they know exactly how that Fruit was grown. Which basically means, they’ll only buy fruit from neighbouring orchards. They simply won’t import Coconuts from Barbados or Jamaica. They need to be 100% sure that no chemicals have been used to treat the fruit or the ground. 

Even when they buy more land for a new orchard. They have to have certificates to prove that that land has been chemical free for at least 10 years.

What does all this mean?

Well two  things. Firstly, you know that their fruit is of the utmost quality. Secondly, they simply won’t have more Citrus available in March, or Passion Fruits in August. We have to wait until the fruit is ripe. And I have to say, I REALLY love that approach. It’d be too easy to simply buy 100 cases of Passion Fruits from the Dominican Republic. But by the time it reaches Turkey, how fresh will that fruit be?  And you can’t guarantee the quality, let alone guarantee it’s pesticide free.

So just on this little story alone, comparing Frona to other Dried Fruit companies, well they’re incomparable. I know first hand that other companies source fruit from all over the world, where they have no idea how it's grown. AND no idea of where and how it’s dried…

…which brings me on to Frona Story number two.

HOW DO FRONA DRY THEIR FRUIT?

This is probably where Lorraine, Paul and I just completely bought into Frona.

Again, we’d seen Photos and Eren and Murat had told us they own their own Drying Facility. But I personally still had many questions. Was it completely theirs? Was it a shared facility? Was it outsourced and did another company Dry their fruit?

On seeing the Factory, all that was alleviated, but what none of us expected was the full back story.

And this goes back to the early 1980s, and Erens Dad!

TURKEY ENERGY CRISIS

You see back in the 1970s, Turkey had a major energy crisis. They couldn’t afford to import fuels and they didn’t have the capabilities to produce their own. (think of the UK power grid. Well there is little to no evidence of even a miniscule version of this in Turkey.

So in the early 1980s, the Turkish Government commissioned a huge Geothermal Programme, of which Erens Dad was a major part. In fact, so major, he was responsible for where the Frona drying facility is located. Which again, before we arrived in Turkey, I didn’t quite comprehend. The both lived in Istanbul. Their Offices are in Istanbul. And the vast majority of the Fruit is growth in the south. Certain things didn’t add up, but now I completely understand why the Drying Facility is located just outside of Simav in the middle of Turkey.

You see Eren’s Dad realised that Simav region was directly above a Tectonic Plate, which in theory meant the perfect location for Geothermal Energy. And he was right. After drilling down some 400 metres, they discovered big Hot Water pockets which could then be converted into Power to run the local area and beyond.

So some 30 years on, this provided the perfect location for Eren and Murats vision of Frona. They sourced some land close by now use that same Hot Water station, pipe the steam a short distance into the facility, run it through a Heat Exchanger which then runs through their mega “Ovens” to dry all their fruit. 

HOW DOES FRONA USE GEOTHERMAL ENERGY

Before the trip, I was envisioning a whole bank of ovens all running off electricity. Nope. What we got was a very clever 10-15 metre tunnel where trays could be stacked up 16 high and wheeled into 9 different sections. While it wasn’t a modern technical marvel, the sheer ingenuity of the set up was incredible.

The other thing about the Simav area. It’s a really poor area. Very run down, not much in the way of jobs and not many other ways for people to earn a living. So with Eren & Murats vision and various Government Grants that helped them set up, they’re providing much needed Jobs to a poverty stricken area of the country.

I don’t know about you, but I just find all this amazing. It’d be too easy just to do things the easy way. Buy Fruit from overseas. Outsource the Drying. But I love a company that does things properly. That puts care and attention into providing the best quality they possibly can. To a company that actually has pride in what they do. That also spills over into the drinks world. For example, I’ll always big up a brand for actually using real life spices in a Spiced Rum, as opposed to those companies that simply add a few drops of a Flavour Compound to an okay bottle of Rum.