Anthony T. Rossi (1900–1993) immigrated to the United States from Sicily when he was twenty-one. He settled in Palmetto and began packing fruit gift boxes under the name Manatee River Packing Company. As the business grew, the company moved to East Bradenton and became Fruit Industries, supplying the ingredients for, among other things, the salads at New York’s famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Rossi produced frozen concentrate orange juice and in 1954 developed flash pasteurization, a process that preserved the fresh taste of the juice.

A photograph shows a laboratory at Tropicana. In 1957, the company’s name was changed to Tropicana Products, Inc. By 1958, a convoy of refrigerated trucks transported goods nationally, and the SS Tropicana (shown with Rossi) was shipping 1.5 million gallons of juice to New York each week. In 1969, Tropicana became the first company in the citrus industry to operate its own plastic container manufacturing plant. Rossi sold Tropicana to Beatrice Foods in 1978 and retired. He was inducted into the Florida Agricultural Hall of Fame in 1987. (Courtesy of Merab-Michal Favorite.)

Images of America - Bradenton.

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