A packing house is a facility where fruit is received and processed prior to distribution to market.
Bulk fruit (such as apples, oranges, pears, and the like) is delivered to the plant via trucks or wagons, where it is dumped into receiving bins and sorted for quality and size. In the case of citrus, ripe fruit with a greenish tint is placed in special storage rooms where ethylene gas is used to bring out the color. Obvious "culls" (fruit that is not suitable to sell for eating due to cosmetic defects) is removed and sold for juice or other uses. Fruit that is ready to be packed into crates or flats is run through a washer and then air-dried. A light coating of natural wax is applied to help the fruit retain moisture and enhance its appeal.
The fruit is transported via conveyor belts to the grading tables where it is visually sorted into three grades: top quality, average, and orchard run, and is then carried via belts to the packing tables. During the late 19th century top-grade fruit would be wrapped in printed tissue paper (a technique developed in the town of Orange, California in the 1880s) and placed in the boxes so that the printed names showed between the slats. In the 1920s tissue wrappers were replaced with printed logos, and ultimately paper stickers. Packed fruit is designated by size, based on the average number of pieces it takes to fill a box. In the days of wooden crates, sizes generally ranged from the 100s to the 390s, demonstrating the wide range of sizes. The sizes for the smaller cardboard boxes introduced in the 1950s and still in use today range from the 40s to the 210s, depending upon the variety of fruit being shipped.
Today, packing is often still performed by hand, even though Sunkist developed robotic packing machines in the 1980s. Packed boxes are stored in a "pre-cooler" to prepare them for the trip to market by truck or rail. Fruit was shipped across the country in ventilated railroad cars or insulated boxcars before the advent of the refrigerator car.
Citrus is a genus of flowering trees and shrubs in the rue family, Rutaceae. Plants in the genus produce citrus fruits, including important crops such as oranges, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, and limes. The genus Citrus is native to South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Melanesia, and Australia. Various citrus species have been used and domesticated by indigenous cultures in these areas since ancient times. From there its cultivation spread into Micronesia and Polynesia by the Austronesian expansion ; and to the Middle East and the Mediterranean via the incense trade route, and onwards to Europe and the Americas.
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".
Corrugated fiberboard or corrugated cardboard is a type of cardboard consisting of a fluted corrugated sheet and one or two flat linerboards. It is made on "flute lamination machines" or "corrugators" and is used for making cardboard boxes. The corrugated medium sheet and the linerboard(s) are made of kraft containerboard, a paperboard material usually over 0.25 millimetres (0.01 in) thick.
The mandarin orange, also known as the mandarin or mandarine, is a small citrus tree fruit. Treated as a distinct species of orange, it is usually eaten plain or in fruit salads. Tangerines are a group of orange-coloured citrus fruit consisting of hybrids of mandarin orange with some pomelo contribution.
Sunkist Growers, Incorporated is an American citrus growers' non-stock membership cooperative composed of 6,000 members from California and Arizona. It is currently 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.
A refrigerator car is a refrigerated boxcar (U.S.), a piece of railroad rolling stock designed to carry perishable freight at specific temperatures. Refrigerator cars differ from simple insulated boxcars and ventilated boxcars, neither of which are fitted with cooling apparatus. Reefers can be ice-cooled, come equipped with any one of a variety of mechanical refrigeration systems, or utilize carbon dioxide as a cooling agent. Milk cars may or may not include a cooling system, but are equipped with high-speed trucks and other modifications that allow them to travel with passenger trains.
A distribution center for a set of products is a warehouse or other specialized building, often with refrigeration or air conditioning, which is stocked with products (goods) to be redistributed to retailers, to wholesalers, or directly to consumers. A distribution center is a principal part, the order processing element, of the entire order fulfillment process. Distribution centers are usually thought of as being demand driven. A distribution center can also be called a warehouse, a DC, a fulfillment center, a cross-dock facility, a bulk break center, and a package handling center. The name by which the distribution center is known is commonly based on the purpose of the operation. For example, a "retail distribution center" normally distributes goods to retail stores, an "order fulfillment center" commonly distributes goods directly to consumers, and a cross-dock facility stores little or no product but distributes goods to other destinations.
Tropicana Brands is a former American multinational fruit-based beverage company. It was founded in 1947 by Anthony T. Rossi in Bradenton, Florida. Between 1998 and 2021 it was a subsidiary of PepsiCo but in August 2021, 61 percent of it was sold along with other juice brands for $3.3 billion to PAI Partners, a private equity firm. PepsiCo retained the remaining 39 percent of ownership.
Limonene is a colorless liquid aliphatic hydrocarbon classified as a cyclic monoterpene, and is the major component in the oil of citrus fruit peels. The D-isomer, occurring more commonly in nature as the fragrance of oranges, is a flavoring agent in food manufacturing. It is also used in chemical synthesis as a precursor to carvone and as a renewables-based solvent in cleaning products. The less common L-isomer has a piny, turpentine-like odor, and is found in the edible parts of such plants as caraway, dill, and bergamot orange plants.
Tissue paper or simply tissue is a lightweight paper or, light crêpe paper. Tissue can be made from recycled paper pulp on a paper machine.
In agriculture, postharvest handling is the stage of crop production immediately following harvest, including cooling, cleaning, sorting and packing. The instant a crop is removed from the ground, or separated from its parent plant, it begins to deteriorate. Postharvest treatment largely determines final quality, whether a crop is sold for fresh consumption, or used as an ingredient in a processed food product.
Hi-C is a fruit juice–flavored drink made by the Minute Maid division of The Coca-Cola Company. It was created by Niles Foster in 1946 and released in 1947. The sole original flavor was orange.
An orange is a fruit of various citrus species in the family Rutaceae ; it primarily refers to Citrus × sinensis, which is also called sweet orange, to distinguish it from the related Citrus × aurantium, referred to as bitter orange. The sweet orange reproduces asexually ; varieties of sweet orange arise through mutations.
Charles Clarke Chapman (1853–1944) was the first mayor of Fullerton, California and a relative of John Chapman, the legendary "Johnny Appleseed". He was a native of Illinois who had been a Chicago publisher before settling in Southern California.
Eliza Tibbets was among early American settlers and founders of Riverside, California; she was an activist in Washington, D.C., for progressive social causes, including freedmen's rights and universal suffrage before going to the West Coast. A spiritualist, she led seances in Riverside. She became known for successfully growing the first two hybrid Washington navel orange trees in California.
Order processing is the process or work-flow associated with the picking, packing and delivery of the packed items to a shipping carrier and is a key element of order fulfillment. Order processing operations or facilities are commonly called "distribution centers" or "DC's". There are wide variances in the level of automation associating to the "pick-pack-and-ship" process, ranging from completely manual and paper-driven to highly automated and completely mechanized; computer systems overseeing this process are generally referred to as Warehouse Management Systems or "WMS".
The Elephant Packing House was built in 1924, in Fullerton, Orange County, Southern California. Valencia oranges were packed here, from the abundant orchards that then dominated the county and gave it its name. William Wolfskill had developed and extensively planted the Valencia orange here in the 19th century. It is one of the last remaining examples of a citrus packing house in Fullerton.
Riverside, California, was founded in 1870, and named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It became the county seat when Riverside County, California, was established in 1893.
Corrugated box design is the process of matching design factors for corrugated fiberboard boxes with the functional physical, processing and end-use requirements. Packaging engineers work to meet the performance requirements of a box while controlling total costs throughout the system.