Seeds of Our Success

Fresh, thick, vine-ripened red tomatoes are the gold standard at Heinz, which is why we produce hybrid tomato seeds through traditional breeding techniques that ensure the highest quality, nutrition, and taste when the fruit is harvested and processed for products ranging from Heinz® Ketchup to Classico® pasta sauces in the U.S., and Heinz® Baked Beans and Heinz® Cream of Tomato Soup in the U.K., to name just a few.

It all begins with our renowned HeinzSeed program. The 6 billion hybrid tomato seeds we supply annually to farmers that grow our tomatoes and to our commercial customers, produce superior-tasting and higher-yielding tomatoes. Higher yields per plant confer an important environmental benefit—namely that farmers can produce more tons of tomatoes with the same or lower amounts of water and fertilizer. In addition, Heinz seeds produce firm tomatoes that remain ripe longer when stored in the field, and are more disease resistant, which means farmers can reduce their use of pesticides.

Our expertise in tomatoes dates back to the origins of our Company, when founder Henry John Heinz introduced his brand of tomato ketchup in 1876. Heinz has been developingproprietary tomato varieties since the 1930s; our hybrid tomato seed program began in the 1970s.

Prior to 1992, our Company sold Heinz-developed tomato seeds only to Heinz-affiliated growers for the produce that would be delivered to Heinz. In 1992, we started to sell hybrid tomato seeds to the California industry, and then expanded globally through affiliates and international dealers.

Today, HeinzSeed is recognized globally as the premier hybrid processing tomato seed company delivering the best tasting, highest field performance, and the best consistency of tomato varieties in the world. HeinzSeed is the market share leader in North America and the world. HeinzSeed develops hybrid tomato varieties that are adapted to various global climates to benefit growers, processors, and end-users everywhere. Our most popular hybrid tomato varieties include those used for Ketchup, Peel-and-Dice, and the “Roma” Fresh Market.

Our success in hybrid tomato seeds is rooted in research that is dedicated to sustainable agriculture and continuous improvement in quality and safety. Our HeinzSeed research facilities are located in California; Ontario, Canada; and Australia. Our research staff includes expert breeders, plant pathologists, agronomists, and technicians. Through their dedicated efforts, Heinz has made progress in enhancing disease resistance so tomato crops are less prone to blight, mold, viruses, and bacterial diseases. At the same time, our fruit quality laboratories evaluate tomatoes for taste, consistency, color, soluble solids, uniformity, size, and shape.

Heinz Chairman, President and CEO Bill
Johnson (right) reviews the Company’s
latest tomato varieties with Reuben
Peterson, leader of Heinz’s global
tomato research and supply team.
Heinz recently expanded its research
farm in Stockton, California, where it is
developing tomato seeds that produce
plants bearing naturally sweeter and
thicker fruit with brighter red color,
through classical breeding techniques.

As a member of the California League of Food Processors, Heinz has worked closely with the California Tomato Grower’s Association and the Processing Tomato Foundation, in conjunction with the University of California at Davis, to develop guidelines for sustainable tomato production and processing in California. Heinz is also a member of the Business Coalition of the Sustainable Food Lab, whose key objective is to promote sustainability throughout the supply chain and to maintain balance between people, profits, and our planet. This coalition promotes creative solutions to supply chain concerns and discusses issues in a constructive way to find solutions.

Just as important, we share our knowledge to benefit the world. Heinz supplies seeds to China, Southeast Asia, India, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Caribbean nations, and Latin America. In China, for example, Heinz is working in the Xinjiang region with COFCO-Tunhe, China’s largest tomato processor. There, we teach farmers about sustainable agriculture, and introduce them to agricultural technologies, including the use of hybrid tomato seeds that will help them improve field yields, fruit quality, food and worker safety, and longterm viability of agriculture in their region. In Egypt and the Ukraine, Heinz is working with growers to introduce the same types of technologies, including hybrid tomato seeds.

The United States Agency for International Development is currently considering funding the development of processing tomato growers in the economically distressed Upper Nile region of Egypt. Heinz would work with ACDI/VOCA, a non-governmental organization in Egypt that promotes economic growth and the development of civil societies, with the goal of helping Egyptian farmers achieve economically successful and sustainable production of tomatoes for processing. The farmers would combine their land and management resources into organizations providing enough scale to allow effective investment in training and new technologies. This, in turn, would provide the necessary crop support for investment in new processing capacity and modern technologies that would meet international standards for quality, cost, performance, and sustainability.

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