Florida's Natural Growers facts for kids
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| Agricultural cooperative | |
| Founded | 1933 |
| Headquarters | , |
| Members | 1100 |
Florida's Natural Growers (stylized "Florida✾s Natural") 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 uses only US-grown fruit (grown by its cooperative members in Florida) in its products.
History
Florida's Natural Growers was founded in 1933 as Florida Citrus Canners Cooperative. Its initial operations included canning juice and grapefruit sections for its members, and in 1938 began extracting juice with automated machines. During World War II, the company produced concentrated orange juice for the military; after the war, 80% of the juice the company produced was in frozen concentrate form to meet consumer demand for the relatively new, convenient form.
In the 1960s, consumer demand shifted to ready-to-drink orange juice, and frozen concentrate sales declined while demand for chilled juices increased. In 1969, the cooperative took the name Citrus World and adopted the current name, Florida's Natural Growers, in 1998. It is currently composed of 12 representatives of 14 citrus cooperatives: Waverly Growers Cooperative, Lake Placid Cooperative, Ben Hill Griffin Inc., Haines City Citrus Growers Association, Orange Growers Marketing Association, Lake Wales Citrus Growers Association, Hunt Brothers Cooperative, Citrus Marketing Services Inc, Peace River Packing Company, Dundee Citrus Growers Association, Winter Haven Citrus Growers Association, and Umatilla Citrus Growers Association, Southern Gardens Citrus Growers, and Lykes.
In 2001, the company opened the "Grove House", a visitor's center across the street from its Lake Wales, Florida processing plant. The Grove House is open Monday through Friday 10 am to 5 pm, and is closed from Memorial Day through the last day of September.
Products and marketing
Florida's Natural produces citrus juices (mainly orange juice and lemonades) under the Florida's Natural, Coral Reef Juice Co. and Donald Duck brand names.
The company's primary marketing strategy is to differentiate itself from main competitors Simply Orange, Minute Maid and Tropicana. It does this by emphasizing its cooperative organization ("Florida's Natural. Together, from Tree to Table"). By comparison, Simply Orange and Minute Maid are both owned by Coca-Cola, while Tropicana is owned in a joint venture by French private equity firm, PAI Partners with PepsiCo keeping a 39% non-controlling stake. As a citrus cooperative cooperative, Florida's Natural uses citrus grown by its cooperative members in Central and South Florida in its products, and seeks to provide the maximum return for fruit to its members, supporting these citrus growers and their families. [Note: As of about June 2022, Florida's Natural changed the label on the front and back panels of its orange juice cartons. The label now reads: "100% Premium Orange Juice, From Concentrate with Calcium & Vitamin D, A premium blend of our Florida not-from-concentrate orange juice and the best orange juice from Mexico". On a side panel, it is further explained: "...Unfortunately, Mother Nature has been pretty harsh over the past years, and our harvest is about 70% lower than just a decade ago. There's just not enough juice in Florida, so all our varieties now contain a blend of juice from Florida and Mexico...." In the past, Florida's Natural was labeled as "not-from-concentrate", but apparently the addition of some percentage of concentrate (from Mexico) now requires it to be labeled as "concentrate".]
