Process water efficiency dropped due to the excessively long season and lowered factory speed at Liberty.

Our standard practice is to recover as many usable resources as possible from the various plant byproducts. Most peel is further processed. Seeds and the remaining peel are called pomace, which is utilized in a multitude of ways, including soil amendments, animal feed and pet food. This ensures 100% of the tomato serves a useful and environmentally friendly purpose.

Natural gas is primarily used to heat water to produce steam which is then used for a variety of purposes. In addition, we have two cogeneration units that combust natural gas to power our large electrical generators. This combined cycle process makes for much more efficient gas usage than importing electricity from the grid and combusting gas alone in a boiler. In addition, we establish a “micro-grid” which is fully self-contained within the factory premises, reducing the burden and demand on the larger electrical grid operation and maintenance.

Our facilities are specifically designed to minimize electrical power consumption. One primary way is the maximum use of steam turbines. Another is accomplished through the use of cooling ponds for the water used by evaporators. Water is pumped to the top of evaporators where it flows out the bottom and back to the cooling pond by gravity. Considering the massive volume of water that flows through the system, pumping the water only once saves approximately 2.2 million kilowatt hours per factory per year.

The containers we ship our product in are signs of our commitment to conserve and reuse. Just like other resources we use in the enterprise, we encourage our customers to recycle and reuse the containers we ship to them along with the tomato product.

Our trucks haul two specially designed lightweight trailers that carry, on average, two tons more tomatoes per trip and still stay under the legal weight limit. This means fewer trips from the field to the factory, resulting in reduced emissions.