Heinz Pushes for Sweeter Tomatoes
By Michelle Fabio
With a 25% increase in the cost of corn syrup, a major ingredient in Heinz’s famous ketchup, the 138-year-old, $2.5 billion company is looking for new ways to reduce the amount of sweeteners added to the mix—and one possibility is to start out with sweeter tomatoes.
Reuben Peterson, the director of the global supply chain for Heinz, is meeting with Stockton, California processors who work with the 150 San Joaquin Valley growers who supply all of the tomatoes for the famous “thick and rich” ketchup.
Within the next two years, the Heinz company hopes to develop sweeter tomatoes that will still produce and thick and rich paste and be pleasing to the consumers’ palates.
If all goes well with, these tomatoes would also be available commercially to the public in addition to the 2,750 genetic varieties already out there.
Ketchup is just the latest product to be hit by increases in the price of corn, which is being used more and more in the production of ethanol, driving up the costs of most every other corn-related product.
Heinz is doing its best to cope with the economic changes, and perhaps our taste buds will be all the better for it—proving that when life hands you tomatoes, maybe you should just make ketchup.
