Reflecting with some OJ

Nov. 24, 2010 - PRLog -- Orange Juice is one of the staple fruit juices in the world.  It can be refreshing, it can be tangy, it can be sweet or it can be bitter there are many variations of this popular fruit juice all over the world. Many have it with their breakfast as a pick me up/replacement for coffee, while there are others that use it to boost their vitamin C intake or there are just some who enjoy the taste of oranges.

Tropicana is one of the biggest juice makers in the world.  You can find their iconic Cartons in your local supermarket but how did this World Renowned juice making company get started and how did they develop their juices to the extent that they became very popular?

Tropicana started from humble beginnings in the state of Florida. They were founded by an Italian man at a time way before the influx of Florida vacation houses became a popular thing.  At the beginning of the 20th century a man by the name of Anthony T. Rossi he was born in Sicily but at the age of 21 he emigrated to the United States and in 1940 he started a fruit company in Florida.  He gathered various fresh fruits and would put them together in a fruit package and would get them sold in department stores in New York Macy's and Gimbels, this was his first venture with the Florida citrus industry.  Seven years later under the name of Manatee River Packing Company he packed fruits in gift boxes and jars.  He had first settled in Palmetto but as the company got larger he relocated east to Bradenton and changed the name of the company to Fruit Industries.  The company started becoming well recognised to the extent that New York's world renowned Waldorf-Astoria Hotel were fruit suppliers of their fresh fruit salads.  It was also around this time that Rossi started to extend his fruit empire buy producing frozen orange juice from concentrate.

In 1852 Rossi expanded his empire with Orange juice being his priority, he purchased the Grapefruit Canning company.  He saw that the orange juice business was more lucrative and decided to stop fruit boxes and put his full attention on fresh fruit segments and juices.  The added attention in these other ventures led to him developing a specially technique which helped preserve the fresh taste of fruit juice.  This was called Flash pasteurisation and he developed it in 1954.  This was the first time that people could experience fresh not from concentrate juice chilled at a time other than when the juice is freshly squeezed.  The juice that was their most popular flavour was the tropicana pure premium and it became their leading product to the extent that the name of the company was changed to Tropicana products

Over the next few decades the company made sound purchases that would help them transport their juices all over America.  First they started with refrigerated trucks then went on then boats. But it was the refrigerated boxcars which was revolutionary as they were able to carry over a million gallons of juice.  It was dubbed the 'Great White Juice Train' as they had over 100 insulted boxcars at this time.  They had small refrigerating units that kept the temperatures cool for many days even in hot climates.  They still use this method of transport today and it is said that they have over 500 cars that have travelled 35 million miles.

It wasn't until the purchase from Seagram that Tropicana started to get worldwide recognition  In 1978 Rossi had sold the company to Beatrice foods and retired from the business and he was inducted in the Florida Agricultural Hall of Fame in 1987.  Beatrice actually developed new products for the Tropicana line, they were the ones that made certain orange juices with pulp.  In the 80s though Tropicana was acquired by The Seagram company this was seen as a revolutionary deal at the time.  A few more products were introduced during this time such as the twister line and frozen juice blends.
It was also because of Seagrams worldwide links that they were able to get Tropicana in various places around the world and in the early 90s you could find it in places like the UK, France, Argentina and in later in the 90s you could find it in Asian countries such as Hong Kong and China.  Near the end of the 20th century PepsiCo acquired Tropicana and also Dole from Seagram and merged them to make them become the world's leading fruit juice provider.  Nowadays they don't use Florida as their source for orange juice but it will always be the place where it started.




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