ASME-Landmark:FMC Citrus Juice Extractor

In 1884, the Bean Spray Pump Company was founded and produced a piston pump used to spray insecticide on fruit orchards in California. During the 1920s, mergers added canning and fruit packaging businesses to the company's portfolio, and the company became the Food Machinery Corporation (FMC) in 1928, with citrus packing, fruit handling, and treating companies under its umbrella. In the 1930s, FMC was responsible for the invention of the mechanical peach pitter.

After producing military vehicles during World War II, FMC returned to the fruit industry in 1947 to address an entirely different type of problem: How to quickly and effectively extract juice from an orange.

The FMC Citrus Juice Extractor features a twenty-four head rotary action that simultaneously extracts juice from the interior of the fruit and citrus oil from the peel surface. This extractor revolutionized the juice industry.

The first unit was operated experimentally on grapefruit at the Sunkist Exchange plant in Tempe, Arizona, during late May of 1946. Tests on citrus fruits continued in California, Texas, and Florida. By 1950, the process was improved by including a system for producing high-quality prefinished juice directly from the extractor.

Today's citrus juice extractors produced by FMC's modern-day incarnation, John Bean Technologies (JBT) Corporation, operate in a similar manner, with constantly-improving speeds: JBT's 2016 catalog boasts a fruit extractor that can process up to 800 fruits per minute. See ASME website for more information