Pineapple Day: celebrating the fruit that tells our story
The tropical fruit par excellence and key product in global trade: pineapple is among the most appreciated food on tables around the world.
On the occasion of Pineapple Day, we celebrate a fruit that has accompanied Tropical Food Machinery’s journey since the beginning, continuing to inspire new solutions for the industry.
The pineapple is, in fact, a special product for our company. It was one of the first tropical fruits processed by our production lines and, even today, it represents one of the applications that best showcases our expertise in food processing.
Originally native to South America, the fruit is now mainly harvested in Costa Rica and in the Philippines: in 2024, these two countries together produced approximately 6 million tonnes of pineapple out of the 29.5 million tonnes harvested globally. However, production has also expanded to other regions, such as the African continent.
From a nutritional standpoint, pineapple is a low-calorie food, rich in vitamin C, potassium, and other minerals; but the feature that most distinguishes it from other fruits is the presence of bromelain: an enzyme that helps digest proteins. This substance is found in the pulp but especially in the stem, from which bromelain can be extracted to produce supplements that aid digestion.
As a fruit consumed worldwide, pineapple processing has evolved over the years to provide a wide range of products. The most well-known is certainly its juice – obtained through a process of peeling, pressing, and clarifying the pulp – or canned fruit in rings, tidbits, and chunks: a type of production that allows the fruit to be processed at the right level of ripeness and exported over long distances.
While pineapple pieces can also be dehydrated and sold as snacks, during juice extraction it is possible to obtain two very special by-products: fibers separated from the pulp are dried and processed to produce a naturally yellow flour, while the pineapple aroma released during processing can be collected and condensed for food use – especially in the confectionery industry – or in cosmetics.
TFM has always developed complete processing lines dedicated to pineapple juice production and canned pineapple, with dozens of installations in major producing countries and continuous testing of its equipment at its production site in Flora, Brazil. This has allowed the company to gain direct insight into the requirements of industrial pineapple processing: from handling a highly fibrous fruit to maximizing extraction efficiency, up to by-product recovery and process optimization.
For Tropical Food Machinery, pineapple is not only one of the most appreciated tropical fruits in the world, but also an important part of our industrial history, an ongoing story shaped by decades of experience and the development of new solutions for food processing.
Discover our ➤ Pineapple processing Lines
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Discover our ➤ Aroma Recovery System DIONISO
