To improve the quality of a food product on the shelf, you must first improve the quality of the produce in the ground.”
- Henry J. Heinz
Every variety of HEINZ Ketchup contains only the juiciest, ripest tomatoes, grown to produce the thick, rich ketchup that has been America’s favorite for 150 years.
HeinzSeed is recognized globally as the premier hybrid tomato seed company, delivering the highest field performance of all climates/topographies in aggregate, and by far the best viscosity varieties in the world.
Heinz breeders are on a constant search for the perfect ketchup tomato. Each year breeders test approximately 350 tomato varieties to find the sweetest, thickest, juiciest ones for our ketchup.
1. Our tasty tomatoes
Henry J. Heinz, a true pioneer in the food world, started breeding tomato varieties in 1934. Since then our proprietary blend of HEINZ tomato seeds has improved year after year, growing a redder, thicker tomato than you will find in grocery stores.
Now, the HEINZ tomato is world-renowned for its distinctive texture, giving HEINZ Ketchup the thick, rich flavor you know and love.
2. Grown by tomato specialists
Each step in the tomato-growing process is monitored by HEINZ Tomato Masters: seven of the world’s foremost experts on ketchup tomatoes, who keep HEINZ tomatoes at the highest standard of quality – because the ketchup on your table is only as good as the tomato it comes from.
3. From Seed to Bottle
1. Planting
Our tomato farming starts at home. 100% of tomatoes that end up in U.S. HEINZ Ketchup bottles come from tomato plants that were planted on U.S. soil. The tomatoes themselves are a mix of tomato varieties that are specially bred to produce red, thick ketchup.
2. Harvesting
All of our HEINZ tomatoes ripen on the vine until they’re picked at peak maturity when the field is 95% red. This gives the tomatoes more sweetness, and minimizes the number of tomatoes that are not up to our standards
3. Transporting
HEINZ tomato fields are all within 30 miles of our paste plants, which means that our tomatoes are thoroughly washed and put into processing within 4 hours of harvesting
4. Planting
95% of HEINZ tomatoes are perfectly ripe when they leave the field, but we further sort them so that only the best tomatoes go into our ketchup. To minimize waste, we use the less-perfect ones as feed or compost.
5. Selection
Our scalding process flash-cooks our tomatoes at 205 ̊ to release the full flavor of the tomato pulp and juices
6. Scalding
Once we’ve strained the thick, juicy tomato pulp, the extracted seeds and skins are recycled and used as livestock feed. Nothing goes to waste.
7. Extraction
What do you get when you take that thick, flavorful pulp and remove the water? A tomato paste that’s even thicker, sweeter, and more flavorful than the original tomato juice
8. Sanitation
To survive the cross-country journey to our ketchup factories, our paste goes through a rigorous sterilization process, which allows us to transport without losing that flavor.
9. Bottling
Just a few more ingredients, including our secret blend of spices, and you get the thick, rich HEINZ Ketchup loved by generations - ready for the bottle.
Keeping our Tomatoes Sustainable
High-yield field
HEINZ seed varieties allow us to grow more tomatoes per acre and lets them ripen on the vine without rotting. This means we use less resources and create less waste.
Waste no Waste
In addition to reducing waste, every bit of tomato that doesn’t go into our ketchup is salvaged and reutilized as feed, compost or fertilizer to grow more crops.
SPREAD THE GOOD
Using our tomato expertise, we’ve created agricultural development projects that teach tomato conservation and conservation farming to farms around the world; including farms in Brazil, China, Egypt, and Spain.
