"To improve the quality of a food product on the shelf, you must first improve the quality of the produce in the ground."

- Henry J. Heinz

Our Tasty
Tomatoes

Henry J. Heinz, a true pioneer in the food world, started breeding tomato varieties in 1934. Since then our proprietary blend of HEINZ tomato seeds has improved year after year, growing a redder, thicker tomato than you will find in grocery stores.

Now, the HEINZ tomato is world-renowned for its unequalled texture, giving HEINZ Ketchup the thick, rich flavor you know and love.

Grown by
tomato specialists

Every tomato in every bottle of HEINZ Ketchup sold in the U.S. is grown in America by passionate people dedicated to growing high-quality, non-GMO tomatoes, many who have farmed with us for generations.

Each step in the tomato-growing process is monitored by HEINZ Tomato Masters: seven of the world’s foremost experts on ketchup tomatoes, who keep HEINZ tomatoes at the highest standard of quality – because the ketchup on your table is only as good as the tomato it comes from.

From Seed
to Bottle

heinz

Planting

1Our tomato farming starts at home. 100% of tomatoes that end up in U.S. HEINZ Ketchup bottles come from tomato plants that were planted on U.S. soil.

Harvesting

2All of our HEINZ tomatoes ripen on the vine until they’re picked at peak maturity, when the field is 95% red. This gives the tomatoes more sweetness, and minimizes the number of tomatoes that are not up to our standards.

Transporting

3HEINZ tomato fields are all within 30 miles of our paste plants, which means that our tomatoes are thoroughly washed and put into processing within 4 hours of harvesting the tomatoes.

Selection

495% of HEINZ tomatoes are perfectly ripe when they leave the field, but we further sort them so that only the best tomatoes go into our ketchup. To minimize waste, we use the less-perfect ones as feed or compost.

Scalding

5Our scalding process flash-cooks our tomatoes at 205º to release the full flavor of the tomato pulp and juices.

Extraction

6Once we’ve strained the thick, juicy tomato pulp, the extracted seeds and skins are recycled and used as livestock feed. Nothing goes to waste.

Evaporation

7What do you get when you take that thick, flavorful pulp and remove the water? A tomato paste that’s even thicker, sweeter, and more flavorful than the original tomato juice.

Sanitation

8To survive the cross-country journey to our ketchup factories, our paste goes through a rigorous sterilization process, which allows us to transport without losing any of that fresh flavor.

Bottling

9Just a few more ketchup ingredients, our secret blend of spices and you get the thick, rich HEINZ Ketchup loved by generations – ready for the bottle and your dinner table.

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Keeping our Tomatoes sustainable

The legacy of the commitment Henry J. Heinz made to quality and sustainability still permeates HEINZ today. By 2025, 100 percent of HEINZ ketchup tomatoes will be sustainably sourced, resulting from pioneering soil health techniques and increased tomato harvests in every acre.

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