Morning Star tomatoes receive one last look-over on the processing facility sort line. Specialists analyze the volume of tomatoes as they are conveyed from the unloading station on their way to the hot break heating tank. Morning Star has also experimented with opto-electronic color sorters to complement the human factor for various applications, including diced tomato production.
Click the "PLAY VIDEO" button below to watch sorters pick through tomatoes looking for anything that shouldn't go into the business end of the processing facility.
This short clip illustrates just how massive an operation a tomato processing facility really is. This volume of tomatoes flows 24 hours per day for up to 100 days straight. This also gives some perspective on how important the excellent crew of Morning Star colleagues are--a breakdown costs several thousand dollars per hour.
Detail of the sort line.
Tomatoes on the move.
Morning Star Diced Tomatoes:
While the vast majority of Morning Star tomatoes are used in the production of tomato paste (approximately 95 percent of the total), diced tomatoes are also a very important Morning Star bulk pack commodity. A day in the life of a diced tomato and that of a paste tomato are essentially the same--up to the sort line. While the next stages of a tomato paste tomato will be described in the following sections, diced tomato production is described below:
The Essence of Great Salsa and Pasta Sauce
Morning Star diced tomatoes are a primary constituent in the world's most renowned finished salsa. Morning Star diced tomatoes are also marketed as canned diced tomatoes, used worldwide as a base by individual gourmets and cooking aficionados for specialty sauces.
Once past the unloading station, tomatoes for dicing run through a sizer. Those tomatoes which do not meet size specifications (too small) are diverted to tomato paste production. Diced tomatoes then go through an automated color sorter, similar to those used on tomato harvesters. From the pool of water, diced tomatoes go into peelers, that includes a steam bath of a lye bath (lye is sodium hydroxide (NaOH)) and heated water. The tomatoes then go through one last stage of sorting, where specialists pick out any green tomatoes, mushy tomatoes, or tomatoes that have peels still hanging on them. From the final sort, the tomatoes enter the dicer. The dicer uses cross-sectional cuts, and can be configured with various sized blades, so exact customer specifications can be met. The diced tomatoes then go onto a shaker table to remove juice and tomato slivers and to keep only the specified sizes of product. After the shaker table, the diced tomatoes enter a calcium bath (this helps maintain the firmness and texture of the product). enter batching kettles, where they are mixed with topping juice. After the batching kettles, diced tomatoes are heated and then cooled in a device known as a tube-in-tube cooler. From this point on, the product is in an aseptic state--free of vitable microorganisms.They are then packed in either 55 gallon aseptic bags in fiber or metal drums or 300 gallon bag-in-box containers. Once packed, Morning Star diced tomatoes have a shelf life of years, allowing continuous production of finished diced tomato products year-round.