Company type | Agricultural cooperative |
---|---|
Founded | 1930Hanson, Massachusetts | in
Founders | Elizabeth Lee, John Makepeace, and Marcus Urann [1] |
Headquarters | Lakeville-Middleborough, Massachusetts , United States |
Key people | Tom Hayes, President and CEO [2] |
Products | Cranberries, grapefruit |
Website | oceanspray.com |
Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. is an American agricultural cooperative of growers of cranberries headquartered in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. It currently has over 700 member growers (in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Florida, British Columbia and other parts of Canada, as well as Chile). The cooperative employs about 2,000 people, with sales of $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2013 and accounts for 70% of North American cranberry production. [3] Their products include cranberry sauce, fruit juices, fruit snacks, and dried cranberries.
The cooperative has made a number of innovations, including the first juice blend, [4] the first juice boxes, [5] and sweetened dried cranberries (Craisins). Its cranberry juice won the ChefsBest Award for best taste. [6]
Ocean Spray was formed in 1930, in Hanson, Massachusetts, by three cranberry growers who wanted to expand their market for cranberries. Led by growers Marcus L. Urann, Elizabeth F. Lee and John C. Makepeace, who had created a cranberry sauce, the cooperative developed more cranberry-based products. In the same year, Ocean Spray became the first producer of cranberry juice drinks with the introduction of Cranberry Juice Cocktail. (A.D. Makepeace Company, one of the original founders of Ocean Spray, has been in continual operation since the late 19th century and is currently the world's largest grower of cranberries.)
In 1963, executive Edward Gelsthorpe worked with Sylvia Schur to develop Cranapple juice, a product that brought the cranberry to greater popularity and increased usage to year-round, earning Gelsthorpe the nickname "Cranapple Ed". [7]
In 1976, the cooperative expanded its membership to grapefruit growers in Florida. In September 1976, the headquarters was moved from Hanson to Plymouth, Massachusetts. [8]
In 1989, the Ocean Spray headquarters was moved to its current location of a building on the Lakeville-Middleborough town line. [8]
In June 2004, Ocean Spray members voted down a joint venture of the cooperative's beverage business with PepsiCo. [9] Pepsi had offered the co-op $100 million, an assumption of debt and fixed prices for cranberry harvests. In July 2006, the cooperative signed a 25-year single-serve (machine-dispensed) juice distribution deal with Pepsi. [10]
In September 2004, Ocean Spray agreed to purchase the processing assets of Northland Cranberry. [11] This acquisition included a juice production facility in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. [12]
Ocean Spray completed expansion of the Wisconsin Rapids processing plant in September 2008. The addition doubles the facility size to 440,000 sq ft (41,000 m2), making it the world's largest cranberry processing facility. The plant has numerous environmentally friendly features including a wastewater treatment facility, energy-efficient lighting, and the use of methane from the nearby Veolia Cranberry Creek Landfill for boiler fuel. With the addition, the plant will produce Craisins, in addition to currently produced juice concentrates. [13]
Throughout 2012, Ocean Spray contributed $387,100 to a $46 million political campaign known as "The Coalition Against The Costly Food Labeling Proposition, sponsored by Farmers and Food Producers". [14] This organization was set up to oppose a citizen's initiative, known as Proposition 37,[ where? ] demanding mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients.
Ocean Spray has juice-filling facilities in Henderson, Nevada; Sulphur Springs, Texas; Allentown, Pennsylvania; and Kenosha, Wisconsin. [15]
In October 2020, Ocean Spray gained media attention when Nathan Apodaca made a TikTok video that went viral featuring the Fleetwood Mac 1977 hit "Dreams" while drinking a bottle of Ocean Spray and riding his skateboard. [16]
This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality .(October 2022) |
In June 2006, at the request of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Ocean Spray agreed to end its support for animal experiments. Previously, Ocean Spray had funded tests involving infecting mice with H. pylori , bacteria that cause stomach ulcers, and then feeding them cranberry juice to see if it had any positive effect. These experiments were conducted to determine the usefulness of Ocean Spray's cranberry juice as a digestif. [17]
In January 2020, Ocean Spray settled a class-action lawsuit that claimed its products were misleading in advertising that they do not contain artificial flavors, since they contain malic acid and/or fumaric acid. The company agreed to pay $5.4 million dollars to claimants. [18] [19]
In February 2020, Ocean Spray dismissed its president and CEO, Bobby Chacko, for violating the company's harassment policy. [20]
Cranberries are a group of evergreen dwarf shrubs or trailing vines in the subgenus Oxycoccus of the genus Vaccinium. Cranberries are low, creeping shrubs or vines up to 2 meters (7 ft) long and 5 to 20 centimeters in height; they have slender stems that are not thickly woody and have small evergreen leaves. The flowers are dark pink. The fruit is a berry that is larger than the leaves of the plant; it is initially light green, turning red when ripe. It is edible, but has an acidic taste.
Orange juice is a liquid extract of the orange tree fruit, produced by squeezing or reaming oranges. It comes in several different varieties, including blood orange, navel oranges, valencia orange, clementine, and tangerine. As well as variations in oranges used, some varieties include differing amounts of juice vesicles, known as "pulp" in American English, and "(juicy) bits" in British English. These vesicles contain the juice of the orange and can be left in or removed during the manufacturing process. How juicy these vesicles are depend upon many factors, such as species, variety, and season. In American English, the beverage name is often abbreviated as "OJ".
Minute Maid is an American product line of beverages, usually associated with lemonade or orange juice, but which now extends to soft drinks of different kinds, including Hi-C. Minute Maid is sold under the Cappy brand in Central Europe and under the brand "Моя Семья" in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Minute Maid was the first company to market frozen orange juice concentrate, allowing it to be distributed throughout the United States and served year-round. The Minute Maid Company is owned by The Coca-Cola Company, the world's largest marketer of fruit juices and drinks. The firm opened its headquarters in Sugar Land Town Square in Sugar Land, Texas, United States, on February 16, 2009; previously it was headquartered in the 2000 St. James Place building in Houston.
Sunkist Growers, Incorporated, branded as Sunkist, is an American citrus growers' non-stock membership cooperative composed of over 1,000 members from California and Arizona headquartered in Valencia, California. Through 31 offices in the United States and Canada and four offices outside North America, its sales in 1991 totaled $956 million. It is the largest fresh produce shipper in the United States, the most diversified citrus processing and marketing operation in the world, and one of California's largest landowners.
Welch Foods Inc., commonly known as Welch's, is an American company, headquartered in Concord, Massachusetts. It has been owned by the National Grape Cooperative Association, a co-op of grape growers, since 1956. Welch's is particularly known for its grape juices, jams and jellies made from dark Concord grapes and its white Niagara grape juice. The company also manufactures and markets an array of other products, including refrigerated juices, frozen and shelf-stable concentrates, organic grape juice, fruit snacks, and dried fruit. Welch's has also licensed its name for a line of grape-flavored soft drinks since 1974. Welch's grape and strawberry soda flavors are currently licensed to Global Beverage Corporation. Other popular products that use the Welch's name are the fruit snacks made by The Promotion In Motion Companies, Inc.
Florida's Natural Growers is an agricultural cooperative based in Lake Wales, Florida. It is currently owned by over 1,100 grower members. It was the only national orange juice maker that used only US-grown fruit in its products; however, this policy changed starting in May 2022. After that time, Florida's Natural products included concentrated orange juice from Mexico.
Cranberry juice is the liquid juice of the cranberry – a fruit recognized for its bright red color, tart taste, and versatility for product manufacturing. Major cranberry products include cranberry juice, dried cranberry, cranberry sauce, frozen cranberry, cranberry powder, and dietary supplements containing cranberry extracts.
Dried cranberries are made by partially dehydrating fresh cranberries, a process similar to making grapes into raisins. They are used in trail mix, salads, breads, with cereals, or eaten on their own. Dried cranberries may be marketed as craisins due to the similarity in appearance with raisins, although the word "Craisin" is a registered trademark of Ocean Spray. Craisins were introduced as part of a packaged cereal produced by Ralston Purina in 1989.
Cranberry sauce or cranberry jam is a sauce or relish made out of cranberries, commonly served as a condiment or a side dish with Thanksgiving dinner in North America and Christmas dinner in the United Kingdom and Canada. There are differences in flavor depending on the geography of where the sauce is made: in Europe it is generally slightly sour-tasting, while in North America it is typically more heavily sweetened.
Slice was a line of fruit-flavored soft drinks originally manufactured by PepsiCo and introduced in 1984 but discontinued by PepsiCo in North America in the late 2000s. Slice was reintroduced in the United States and Canada as a brand of organic food by "New Slice Ventures LLC", which acquired the trademark rights in those countries.
Diamond Foods, Inc. was an American packaged food company based in San Francisco, that marketed nuts and other snack foods. Diamond Foods was acquired by Snyder's-Lance in 2016, and as of 2018, Campbell Soup Company owns Diamond Foods's former snack brands; Diamond of California, Diamond Foods's nut business, is owned by Blue Road Capital.
Sunsweet Growers Incorporated is an American agricultural marketing cooperative founded in 1917 as the California Prune and Apricot Growers Association. Sunsweet is headquartered in Yuba City, California, USA. The company operates the largest dried fruit plant in the world.
3-Amino-1,2,4-triazole (3-AT) is a heterocyclic organic compound that consists of 1,2,4-triazole with an amino group as a substituent.
A sea breeze is a cocktail containing vodka with cranberry juice and grapefruit juice. The cocktail is usually consumed during summer months. The drink may be shaken in order to create a foamy surface. It is considered an IBA Official Cocktail.
The Cape Cod or Cape Codder is a type of cocktail consisting of vodka and cranberry juice. Some recipes also call for squeezing a lime wedge over the glass and dropping it into the drink. The name refers to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a peninsula and popular tourist destination located in the eastern United States which is famous for growing cranberries.
Edward Gelsthorpe was an American marketing executive. He used his creative skills to build markets for new products such as Ban roll-on deodorant at Bristol-Myers, Cran-Apple juice for the Ocean Spray cooperative, and Manwich canned sloppy joe sauce for Hunt-Wesson.
Cran-apple juice is a blend of cranberry juice and apple juice marketed by the Ocean Spray cooperative, styled as Cran•Apple. The juice blend is marketed as combining the tartness of cranberry with the sweetness of the apple. Until 1963, when the product was first developed, cranberries were sold in the form of cranberry juice and cranberry sauce primarily around Thanksgiving and Christmas time. The Cranapple blend helped turn the cranberry into a year-round product. Cranapple started a trend and was followed by other juice blends.
Juice is a drink made from the extraction or pressing of the natural liquid contained in fruit and vegetables. It can also refer to liquids that are flavored with concentrate or other biological food sources, such as meat or seafood, such as clam juice. Juice is commonly consumed as a beverage or used as an ingredient or flavoring in foods or other beverages, such as smoothies. Juice emerged as a popular beverage choice after the development of pasteurization methods enabled its preservation without using fermentation. The largest fruit juice consumers are New Zealand and Colombia. Fruit juice consumption on average increases with a country's income level.
Northland Juices is a division of Apple & Eve, a juice company based in Port Washington, New York, United States. Apple & Eve, founded by president Gordon Crane in 1975, is one of the largest privately held juice companies in the U.S.