TropicanaÐ'®: The Untold Story

When you pick up a carton of orange juice, do you ever wonder how it all started? The following paragraphs will give you an insight into the colossal, wild world of orange juice.

First, let us begin with the orange groves. There are orange groves all over the world. Spain is one of the world's largest orange producers, as well as Mexico and the USA. In these orange groves, there are many different kinds of oranges, such as Navel, Clementines, and Tangerines. With these oranges, we can make different kinds of orange juices. Here are the three most popular: Original, Orange Tangerine, and Orange Passion fruit.

However, to get this succulent orange juice we need companies to make it. Many companies manufacture it, but let us study the history of the Tropicana CompanyÐ'®.

In the late 1940s, Mr. Anthony Rossi was an entrepreneur in search of a way to use the smaller fruit instead of the majority going to waste, but to Mr. Rossi, this was not a dilemma. It was an opportunity. He would squeeze the smaller oranges into juice, and 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.

The company made a big splash in 1955, when it introduced the world's first and only orange juice tank ship. TropicanaÐ'® 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 SS Tropicana. At peak capacity, the ship carried 1.5 million gallons of orange juice from Florida to New York.

In 1969, Tropicana's Great White Train, the first unit train in the food industry, carried orange juice and oranges across America. The train, which made its inaugural run to the Northeast