Growing Maid

Minute Maid Corp., one of the first companies to market frozen orange juice, last week became the owner of its own fruit groves. For $5,000,000, it bought 4,700 acres of orange and grapefruit groves near its three processing plants in Florida from Di Giorgio Fruit Corp., one of the biggest U.S. fruit growers.

Minute Maid's initial success came when it proved that frozen orange juice could have a fresh-squeezed taste. It got its second boost when it sold Crooner Bing Crosby 20,000 shares of stock at 10-c- a share and made him a director (TIME, Oct. 18, 1948). As part of the deal, Crosby, whose stock is now worth $14.75 a share (paper profit: $293,000) began plugging Minute Maid on a song & chatter radio program five days a week.

In the twelve months ending Oct. 31, Minute Maid rang up $11.8 million in net sales, as against a mere $3.7 million the year before, and showed a net profit of $996,000. In the current year Minute Maid plans to boost orange juice output to 213 million of its 6-oz. cans, up 142 million cans from last year.

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