INTRODUCTION
Our goal is to produce the finest quality, innovative, nutritious, wholesome, tasty and fun ice blocks,
hand-crafted locally from all natural ingredients.
Careful consideration of ingredients is important to us and they contain
no added colours,
no artificial flavours,
no gelatine,
no alcohol (including essences),
no emulsifiers,
no preservatives,
no gums,
no eggs,
no glucose syrup,
no undisclosed “processing aids”,
and definitely no GMO derived “ice structuring protein”
, etc ... all contain less or equal sugar than a ripe banana of a similar weight.
Many of the ingredients companies like Nestlé (Peters) and Unilever (Streets) use such as the emulsifier guar gum,
are added to make possible the shipment, storage and efficient mass production of iced confectionery.
We reject that rationale and add only what is entirely necessary for a recipe.
Our Mojito for example contains locally produced organic lime, locally produced organic mint and even a slice of organic lime.
Compare this to the Icy Pole "Lemonade" which does not even have lemon in it's ingredients.
ORGANICS
Where possible we prefer to use organic ingredients.
For example we use organic milk and many of our fruits are organic.
Our relationships with local organic farmers enables us to guarantee quality and improve consistency of supply.
Sugar poses us additional ethical problems.
We have been in touch with the Australian Organic Sugar Producers Association in an attempt to source organic sugar in Australia
and unfortunately there is no certified organic Australian sugar mill.
Since we live in a sugar growing region it seems crazy to use certified sugar imported from South America especially when certified organic sugar cane goes into Australian mills.
We are experimenting with using Australian organic sugar cane juice from Woongoolba, QLD and Australian Rapadura.
FLAVOURS
Our Ice Blocks! are divided in two main categories;
milk (organic milk and in some cases yoghurt or organic milk and cream) and
juice (fruit juice, pulp and often slices of real fruit. i.e. as much of the edible, tasty and healthy parts of a real fruit as possible).
Juice flavours are vegan friendly and many are free of added sugar.
Milk based are (lacto) vegetarian friendly.
We operate a seasonal retail menu of eight popular flavours with occasional specials.
All but muesli are gluten free.
Flavours currently include: (press refresh (F5) to change)
RETAIL
We sell through a widening variety of markets, health food shops, organic shops, patisseries, delicatessens, kiosks and cafes in north eastern NSW, Sydney, south eastern Queensland and Brisbane.
We are happy to do events and private functions with custom flavours, alcoholic ice blocks and custom labeling.
For retailers with vertical display freezers we can provide a suitably sized clear acrylic basket.
For retailers without freezers we can offer one of two types of on-loan display freezer a small counter top display freezer for retailers with frozen storage space but little display room and
200 litre curved and angle topped display chest freezers. These come tastefully decaled and with tailor made baskets.
200 litre freezer details.
Example freezer contract.
Our Ice Blocks! have a recommended retail price of $2.00 or $3.10 inc GST and depending upon their complexity
and the price of the ingredients come in 45ml, 60ml or 80ml sizes.
Market research done in Sydney indicates adult consumers prefer the 60ml size and the portion control that size offers.
Send an email to
to get more information or follow us on twitter where we discuss our latest seasonal ice block experiments, etc...
Or contact Benna or John at Ice Blocks!™ On 04 0607 5266 for wholesale enquiries.
Ice Blocks! are processed and packaged in Murwillumbah, Northern NSW. ABN 37 732 820 605
ENTIRELY NATURAL & HAND CRAFTED
We make significant effort to ensure Ice blocks! are a hygienic, safe and a pleasing experience and strive to maintain and improve flavour and ingredient quality.
But because Ice blocks! are hand crafted and natural their appearance does vary.
This is how they are meant to be.
You can also expect to encounter whole fruit, fresh juice, real fruit slices, chunks of fruit, fruit pulp, fruit skin, zest, rind, seeds, pits, etc...
It comes down to either multinational machine made or hand made from local ingredients, it's your choice.
Some of the best fruit in the world grows in Australia, yet most ice blocks sold in Australia seem be machine produced foods from the 1980's.
It's a market dominated by Unilever (Streets) the worlds biggest ice cream manufacture and
Nestlé (Peters) the worlds largest food company.
We think we can do something better and something uniquely Australian.
ETHICAL PACKAGING
Ice Blocks are not packaged in plastic they are wrapped in a marine safe,
compostable cellulose film part derived from eucalyptus wood pulp.
This film has passed the internationally recognised tests to confirm full biodegradability in 24 days in marine and waste-water environments and home compost heaps.
No animals marine or otherwise will be killed or maimed with this packaging.
The film also has a carbon neutral status.
Most of us recycle and put things in bins, but lets face it packaging for this kind of product does not always get disposed of properly and much of that end up spoiling our natural environment, in some cases for hundreds of years.
We don't believe that's acceptable and that why our Ice Blocks!™ are packaged in compostable NatureFlex™ film designed to bio-degrade to natural nutrients in a year.
Using this film for Ice Blocks!™ is actually a world first.
NatureFlex™ film “performed brilliantly” following a testing reported in the May 2009 edition of Which? Gardening magazine.
The test was carried out to determine how well films broke down in a home compost bin and NatureFlex™ impressed the judges by completely breaking down in just a few weeks.
Our sticks are made from Australian Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) a native to north eastern Australia,
harvested from pesticide free sustainable forests in Queensland.
The plantations are controlled by the State of Queensland Government and have sustainable forest management certification AFS/01-21-03 recognised by PEFC.
Hoop Pine ice block sticks decompose naturally after being discarded and exposed to the elements.
We are also proud that much of our advertising material is made from recycled waste in particular broken surf boards and discarded children's chalk boards.
The broken surfboards are cut to look like x25 x50 or x100 sized versions of our ice blocks, a wooden stick is bolted on and they are used to display menus or as large signs.
NatureFlex is the lowest enviromental impact packaging that we could find.
Normal plastic degrades in sunlight by slowly breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic.
Thus plastic which hasn't either been recycled or burnt still exists somewhere in the enviroment.
Just because our packaging is compostable however does not mean you should be irresponsible with litter.
What it does mean is that those accidents that do happen don't have long lasting consequences.
HISTORY OF THE ICE BLOCK
In 1905 the 11 year old Frank Epperson mixed some soda water powder and water and left the mixture on the back porch overnight with the stirring stick still in it. The temperature dropped to a record low that night in and the next day Frank had a stick of frozen soda water to show his friends.
He realized the commercial possibilities of his invention and applied for a patent, which was granted in 1924.
Frozen Confectionary.
The Australian term ice-block, for a water ice on a stick, was first published in 1948 (Australian National Dictionary) and has recently been regarded as a word which is dropping out of common usage.
Lets hope we can revitalise this small niche of Australian culture.
NAMES
English: ice pop or popsicle (US, Canada), ice lolly, lolly ice, ice-cream bar(UK), ice block, iceblock, ice pole, icy pole (Australia, New Zealand).
German: wassereis, eis am stiel, eislutscher
Dutch: ijslolly, ijslollie, waterijsje, eis-pops, ijsco, ijs, ijsje.
French: glace à l’eau, glace parfumée, sucette glacée, sucette de glace, esquimau, bâtonnet glacé, bâtonnet de crème glacée .
Spanish: paleta (Mexico), polo, barra de helado, paleta de helado (Spain), chupete, helado de agua (Chile, Peru).
Portuguese: picolé, gelado de chupar, gelado com pauzinho, gelado chupa-chupa.
Italian: ghiacciolo, cremino, gelato da passeggio.
Pig Latin: iceay iollyay.
Norwegian: ispinne.
Swedish: isglass, isglasspinne, chokladdoppad glass.
Danish: ispind, sodavandsis.
Manx: kibbin millish.
Irish: líreacán int reoite.
Polish: lizak.
Czech: nanuk.
Latvian: auglu saldējums.
Finish: mehujää, jäätelöpuikko.
Estonian: pulgajäätis.
Hungarian: jégkrém.
Turkish: meyveli çubuk dondurma.
Israel: kartiv, artic, קרטיב, ארטיק, שלגון.
Morocco: eskimo.
Arabic: (الاسم) نوع من الحلوى
Chinese: 冰棒.
Indonesian: es loli.
Korean: ice keki, 아이스캔드.
Japanese: ポプシクル
Greek: παγωτό γρανίτα
Russian: леденец на палочке
Maori: poro hukapapa.
ICE STRUCTURING PROTEIN
On 24 November 2005 Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) approved
Unilever's (Streets) application to use genetically modified yeast to grow
“ice structuring protein”, more correctly Type-3 ice-structuring protein HPLC 12, with a gene from the ocean pout (Macrozoarces americanus) fish
and use it to improve the consistency and storage properties of its ice creams.
Between 2003 to 2007 Unilever (Streets) sold more than 47 thousand litres of ISP containing ice cream confectionary in Australia and New Zealand. (The EFSA Journal (2008) 768, 1-18)
Since FSANZ approved it as a “processing aid” it does not even require labelling as an ingredient.
