From Gift Boxes to a Global Juice Business...

1947-1951: A Business Blossoms

In the late 1940s, Anthony Rossi was an entrepreneur in search of the ideal business. He was always interested in fine food, presented to please the eye as well as the palate. So, with typical Rossi artistry and care he began to prepare gift boxes of Florida citrus. Despite intense competition, his reputation for quality and creativity grew. Soon he was selling the boxes to department stores, including Macy's and Gimbel's in New York City.

Still, he was not satisfied. How could he improve quality and reduce costs, to make his gift boxes even more desirable? He was buying citrus from retail supermarkets in Miami. If he could get closer to the trees, he reasoned, the fruit and the profits would be sweeter.

He purchased the Overstreet Packing Company in Palmetto, Fla., renamed it the Manatee River Packing Company, and began to buy fruit directly from the groves.

His gift boxes of Florida citrus were now more fresh, more popular and more profitable than ever. But since only the largest fruit was selected for the gift boxes, a lot of smaller fruit was going to waste. To Mr. Rossi, this was not a problem. It was an opportunity. He would squeeze the smaller oranges into juice, then ship it to the Northeast along with fresh fruit sections.

With this goal in mind, Mr. Rossi moved his packing operation from Palmetto to Bradenton and formed Fruit Industries, Inc.- the company that was to become Tropicana. At first, the Florida Citrus Commission denied the company a license to package and ship its products, convinced that the fruit and juice would spoil on its journey north. But through trial and error, Mr. Rossi and his employees developed a process of packaging orange and grapefruit sections aseptically in glass containers, and the license was granted.

The company began to ship jars of sectioned fruit and fresh juice to hotels and restaurants in specially-modified refrigerated trucks. Ingredients for the fresh fruit salads on the menu of New York's famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel were supplied by Fruit Industries; the hotel had a standing order for 1,000 gallons of juice and fruit jars each week.

At the Bradenton plant, Mr. Rossi employed about 50 people. Wearing white uniforms and rubber gloves, they sectioned the fresh fruit by hand over stainless steel counters and packed it carefully into glass jars. First layers of grapefruit sections, then oranges. In the 'fruit salad' jars, they added slices of pineapple. This attention to quality and detail became the hallmark of the company.

Shipping fresh fruit segments and juice to the Northeast proved so successful that Mr. Rossi discontinued production of his fruit gift boxes. He had changed the way Northerners bought and enjoyed Florida citrus. But another revolution was dawning for the citrus industry. The post-World War II era was ushering in the baby boom and the growth of the suburbs. Busy families kept their new refrigerator-freezers stocked with frozen dinners and, beginning in the late 1940s, frozen concentrated orange juice.

Mr. Rossi saw this new development as a natural extension of his fruit and juice business. And he began to search for new, larger facilities and more land so the company could continue to grow.

1952 – 1957 Launching a Leader

In the fast-growing food industry of the 1950s, the upstart company from Bradenton, Florida was already making waves.

Frozen concentrated juice packages, emblazoned with the lively character of Tropic-Ana, were consumer favorites in supermarket cases across America. To help keep up with demand, Fruit Industries moved to a larger facility in 1953, the former Florida Grapefruit Canning Plant. The location is the current headquarters of Tropicana.

But despite phenomenal growth, there were still new markets to explore and new products to develop. In keeping with its goal of using every part of the fruit, the company invested in machinery to convert citrus peel, pulp and seeds into nutritional cattle feed.

In the early 1950s, if Americans wanted orange juice, they had a simple choice. They could mix frozen concentrate with water, or occasionally - depending on the season and availability - they could squeeze their own oranges. Although most people in the food industry believed that distributing large quantities of fresh chilled juice was virtually impossible, Mr. Rossi was convinced that there must be a way.

Although he had successfully shipped relatively small amounts of juice to hotels and restaurants, he knew his early methods would not allow him to mass market the juice. The challenge was to find a technique for extending shelf life while retaining fresh taste. Mr. Rossi's answer was flash pasteurization-raising the temperature of the juice for a very short time.

But pasteurization was just part of the solution. The company also had to find the right container, and the best way to quickly get the juice to the consumer. So the American Can Company was commissioned to develop a waxed paper carton in half pint, pint and quart sizes. One million dollars' worth of refrigerated trucks were ordered before anyone had agreed to sell the juice in any market. Once again, the company's risk was rewarded. Soon the juice was being distributed across the country. Each morning 2,000 dairies delivered cartons of Tropicana® orange juice to the doorsteps of their customers.

Chilled, not-from-concentrate juice became a popular national product, and in 1957 the name of the company was changed to reflect the growing appeal of the Tropicana® brand. Fruit Industries became Tropicana Products, Inc.

The company made another big splash that same year, when it introduced the world's first and only orange juice tank ship. Tropicana built a processing plant in Cocoa Beach, on Florida's East Coast, and another plant for receiving, packaging and distribution in Whitestone, New York. Then a ship was purchased, refitted with stainless steel tanks and christened the S.S. Tropicana.

At peak capacity, the ship carried 1.5 million gallons of orange juice from Florida to New York each week-helping launch Tropicana's leadership in the American food industry.

1958 – 1968 Charting a Course

In 1961, the S.S. Tropicana made its final voyage delivering chilled orange juice to New York. While the ship could get Tropicana's products to market quickly, the juice still had to be put into cartons in New York. So the company found a way to package its juice at Tropicana headquarters, and then ship the packaged product directly from Bradenton.

Fruit sections and juice had been shipped in glass jars in the early days of Fruit Industries. Glass was still a good way to package juice for distant markets, but the volume of juice the company was selling in the 1960s couldn't be packaged rapidly enough using existing methods.

Once again, Tropicana charted a new course for the citrus industry-high-speed vacuum-packing. Filling and sealing large quantities of jars quickly was the key to quality. A dedicated team of Tropicana engineers developed the first commercially acceptable high-speed glass packaging line ever devised for food products. In the 1960s Tropicana made history once again, by becoming the first company to sell bottled Florida orange juice overseas.

The company received its first international order-for 14,000 cases of Tropicana® orange juice-at a European food industry trade fair in 1965. France was the first country outside North America to enjoy Tropicana® products.

1978 - 1987

By the late 1970s, Tropicana's success was being studied on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms across the nation.

Major business magazines-including Forbes, Fortune and Business Week-profiled Tropicana and noted the company's tremendous growth. Mr. Rossi resisted overtures from several major corporations, including Philip Morris, looking to expand its holding in the food industry; PepsiCo, seeking another way to compete with arch-rival Coca-Cola and its juice products; and Kellogg, dreaming of serving America orange juice along with its famous breakfast cereals.

But another company had its eye on Tropicana, too. Beatrice Foods, a Chicago-based conglomerate whose products included Dannon Yogurt, County Line Cheese and Martha White Flour, was known for letting the local management of each of its over 400 companies make most of their own major decisions.

Mr. Rossi, who was very protective of the company he had led for over 30 years, believed that Beatrice was the best suitor, and that the time was finally right. In 1978 Beatrice acquired Tropicana Products, Inc. As part of a larger corporation, Tropicana had the financial resources to develop more new products in a wider variety of containers and sizes than ever before, including Tropicana HomeStyle juice with pulp, introduced in 1985.

In 1986 Beatrice was acquired by investment company Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts, and Tropicana was again on the threshold of another new era.

1988 - 2002

In 1988, the Seagram Company Ltd. acquired Tropicana. During the ensuing decade, Tropicana expanded from its Eastern U.S. stronghold throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Tropicana launched dozens of successful new juice and juice beverage creations; one of which is the Twister product line. To meet the production and distribution challenges, Tropicana expanded its facilities rapidly in the 1990s. The company built a co-generation plant in Bradenton to produce its own electricity and steam; constructed new distribution centers in Jersey City, NJ and Cincinnati, OH; and purchased a processing plant in City of Industry, Ca.

An international strategic alliance was announced in 1991, when Tropicana formed a partnership with Kirin to process and distribute Kirin-Tropicana juices in Japan.

In 1995, Seagram acquired the Dole Food Company's global juice business, including Dole brands in North America, and Dole, Fruvita, Looza and Juice Bowl juices and nectars in Europe.

On October 4th, 1996, Tropicana announced an agreement with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to name its home stadium Tropicana Field.

On August 25th, 1998, PepsiCo, Inc. completed a $3.3 billion acquisition of Tropicana Products, Inc. from The Seagram Company Ltd.

In 2002, Tropicana Smoothies launched nationally in a variety of retail outlets.

Tropicana Today

Today, Tropicana Juices are enjoyed almost everywhere–North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. PepsiCo acquired Tropicana, the only truly global juice business (including the Dole juice business) in August 1998.

Half a century after Anthony Rossi began to change the way Americans enjoy fruit products, Tropicana is changing the shape of global refreshment.

Tropicana will continue to create original products, pioneer innovative processes and explore new markets for the world's best juice and juice beverages.