Inside Ocean Spray’s Cranberry Harvest and Ingredient Operations
Prepared Foods gets a firsthand look at how the cooperative turns bog-fresh cranberries into versatile ingredient solutions
Prepared Foods Chief Editor Bob Garrison rakes cranberries toward a vacuum pump infeed just below the water’s surface.
Prepared Foods Chief Editor Bob Garrison visited Ocean Spray Ingredients (OSI) at the cooperative’s Lakeville, Mass., headquarters.
Ocean Spray Ingredients showcased the cooperative’s history, ingredient offerings, cranberry health benefits and supply to global food and beverage category applications. Sharing details were Seema Kedia, senior manager of strategic marketing; and Adena Barber, growth & customer marketing manager.
Ocean Spray Ingredients has dedicated product development scientists and chefs to help customer R&D teams. Industry editors met Senior Product Development Scientist Curtis Gong and Senior Research Chef Charles Morrill (pictured). OSI offerings include a variety of Sweetened Dried Cranberries, BerryFusions Dried Fruit, cranberry concentrate, puree, frozen cranberries, and even upcycled cranberry seeds. These ingredients fit a wide range of bakery foods, snacks, meal kits, confections, dairy products and other items.
Cranberries are pumped upward to a small tower beside the bog and then they shoot down into a large dump truck with a flat, open bed.
Ocean Spray cooperative farmer Steve Ward hosted editors at his bogs, which span three generations of family members. Harvest season extends from mid-September until around mid-November in North America and from March through May in the South American country of Chile (where there are more Ocean Spray cooperative farmer-members).
Ocean Spray’s receiving station takes initial truck weights and quality assurance samples. Hydraulics lift the truck’s front-end so cranberries dump into holding bins. A series conveyors next separate out water, leaves and other extraneous foreign materials. Trucks later are refilled and weighed (to determine grower payment) before cranberries travel to the processing facility.
Ocean Spray’s plant in Middleboro, Mass., factory processes a range of products including Ocean Spray’s Sweetened Dried Cranberries, concentrate, fresh cranberries and juice products.
Cranberries are washed, weighed and color sorted before further processing.
Baked, sliced dried cranberries travel to weigh-scale hoppers that feed packaging equipment for 25-pound bags.
Here’s an instance where it’s fun to be bogged down at work! This October, Prepared Foods Chief Editor Bob Garrison traveled to Ocean Spray Ingredients, Lakeville, Mass., to see how the cooperative processes ingredients—all the way from a bog harvest through the production plant floor.
Please enjoy this slide show of the day’s highlights!
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