Where does açaí come from.

From a palm tree in the Amazon floodplains to a freezer in Melbourne. Here's the journey a scoop of açaí takes before it reaches your blender.

01A palm, not a bush

Açaí comes from the açaí palm (Euterpe oleracea), a slender, multi-stemmed palm that grows in the wetlands and floodplains of the Amazon, especially around the river's mouth in northern Brazil. Each palm produces heavy bunches of small, dark purple fruit high up the trunk.

A related species, Euterpe precatoria, grows further west in the Amazon and is also harvested for açaí, but Euterpe oleracea is the one behind most of the açaí traded around the world.

02Pará: the heart of açaí

The Brazilian state of Pará, whose capital Belém sits at the mouth of the Amazon, dominates production. Figures from IBGE, Brazil's national statistics agency, put Pará at about 94% of Brazil's açaí, with production close to 1.6 million tonnes in 2022.

In Belém, açaí isn't a trend. It's an everyday staple, sold fresh each morning at markets along the waterfront and often eaten unsweetened with cassava flour, fish or shrimp.

03How it's harvested

Much of Brazil's açaí is still gathered by hand, by harvesters who climb the thin palm trunks to cut down the fruit bunches. The fruit is stripped from the stalks, sorted and taken by boat or truck to processing plants, a race against the clock, because fresh açaí starts to spoil within a day or two of picking.

04From fruit to frozen pulp

At the plant, the fruit is washed and soaked, then machines separate the thin layer of edible pulp from the large seed. The pulp is mixed with water, graded by how much fruit it contains, pasteurised and frozen quickly. That frozen pulp is the starting point for every sachet, pail and soft-serve mix that leaves Brazil.

05The trip to Australia

Frozen açaí travels in refrigerated shipping containers, kept frozen all the way from Brazil to Australian ports, then on to cold storage. Every link in that cold chain matters, because açaí that partly thaws and refreezes loses colour and texture.

That's the journey our açaí makes too: sourced from Brazil, shipped frozen, and held in freezer warehousing in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland until it reaches your kitchen.