When Bob Gross smells vinegar and cooked tomato sauce in the air, he knows the world’s largest Heinz ketchup factory is at work.
Gross is the economic development director of Fremont, Ohio. He said the city is known for four things.
“You think of President Rutherford B. Hayes, Heisman Trophy winner Charles Woodson, the beautiful Sandusky River and Heinz ketchup,” Gross said.
Fremont’s Heinz plant produces over one billion pounds of ketchup each year. Only one other factory, in Muscatine, Iowa, manufactures ketchup for the company’s United States market.
In other words, the ketchup at your nearest grocery store likely came from a small city in Ohio, as did its packaging.
Minutes away from Fremont’s Heinz factory, BMG creates molds for the iconic clear plastic bottles Heinz ketchup comes in.
Graham Packaging Company, less than a 10-minute drive from the ketchup plant, manufactures those bottles.
Gross said that when he sees a Heinz ketchup bottle, he checks the bottom for a printed “FR,” which means the bottle was made in Fremont.
Then, he looks at the lid’s ink stamp for the same letters. They indicate the ketchup itself was also Fremont-produced.
“Every time I’m out of town, if I’m at a restaurant, I grab a bottle,” Gross said.
He’s encountered those inscriptions beyond Ohio, in cities such as Washington, D.C.
Graham Packaging plant manager Frank Croskey said he does the same when he travels. He’s found Fremont-made bottles in Jamaica.
“You feel good about it, knowing that your bottles are going all over a place,” Croskey said. “Right here, out of northeast Ohio.”
The Heinz plant and its nearby manufacturing companies employ hundreds of people. Gross said Heinz ranks among the top three largest employers in Fremont.
Inside the factory, ketchup ingredients are cooked in large stainless steel pots before being packaged in bottles that move down a production line, he said.
“The conveyor belt is kind of like a roller coaster,” Gross said. “It weaves in and out all over the building.”
The building itself is on 5th Street, one of the city’s main entrance points on its south side. Located nearby is a residential neighborhood that Gross said arrived long after the plant, which opened in 1937.
Fremont’s surrounding fields made it a prime location for growing tomatoes, Gross said. The city itself had a water and sewer system to operate the plant.
Despite its many Midwest ties, the H.J. Heinz Company actually originated in 1869 in Pittsburgh, the hometown of founder Henry John Heinz.
Heinz History Center senior curator Emily Ruby said industrialization spurred prepared foods’ popularity as people had less access to fresh produce in urban areas, and the company soon grew beyond the Steel City.
“He was kind of like ‘farm to table’ before that was a term that people used,” Ruby said.
She said the transcontinental railroad allowed the company to ship products and acquire more farmland throughout the Midwest in the 1870s. Heinz built warehouses and factories in St. Louis and Chicago.
While Heinz products peaked in different eras — pickles in earlier years, soup during the Great Depression — Ruby said diner culture paired with heavy marketing spurred ketchup’s popularity boom in the 1950s.
It’s remained one of Heinz’s most recognizable products since.
“When you think of hamburgers and hot dogs and fries, this is a very American kind of tradition,” Ruby said. “And then, of course, what goes with that better than Heinz ketchup?”
The company’s first factory foray into Ohio was not to Fremont but to Bowling Green in 1914. That plant shut down in 1975.
But former Bowling Green resident Alan Borer, who moved to Bowling Green in 1973 at age 12, still remembers the scent of tomatoes emanating from the factory six blocks away from his home.
“It was kind of a sign of the time here,” Borer said. “Summer was coming to an end. School starts soon.”
He said the smell in the air was “much more pungent, much stronger, and I might even use the word raw” compared to a bottle of Heinz ketchup.
“I miss it in a way that brings back memories,” he said, recalling the ketchup smell prompting family visits to McDonald’s for french fries.
Heinz’s ketchup operations have evolved over the years, and Gross said Fremont’s economy has had its ups and downs. But the city’s Heinz plant has remained through it all, persisting even as the Bowling Green and Tracy, Calif. plants closed. Ruby said by 2007, the Fremont plant produced 80% of Heinz ketchup in the U.S.
The aroma Borer experienced as a teenager lingers in the air, decades later.
“We live here, we get used to it,” Gross said. “But there are certain days where you’re like, ‘Oh, they’re working hard today.’ You have that smell in the air. That’s a good smell.”
I checked my bottle of Heinz ketchup. The bottom of the bottle does NOT contain the FR stamp, so I’m not sure where the bottle came from. The cap does indeed have FR in the stamp code, so I am reassured that the ketchup was manufactured in Fremont. FWIW, I live in the Pittsburgh metro area.
I went to school across from a grain elevator. The air smelled of popcorn. It was pleasant in the morning but by the time school let out it was a bit overbearing. I can’t imagine smelling catsup all the time.
Why did you use “pounds” to describe the amount of a liquid (ketchup)? You should have used “gallons”.
And what’s the story with the alternative spelling “Catsup” that we’ve seen?
Ketchup is sold by weight due to its consistency. It is “non-newtonian”. It’s viscosity changes when force is applied to it. Since it does not flow well, portioning it is easier done by weight rather than by volume.
As for Catsup versus Ketchup, here’s what AI had to say…
The word “catsup” first appeared in print in 1730, used by Jonathan Swift in his poem A Panegyrick on the D–n, though earlier spellings like “ketchup” (1680s) and “catchup” (1690) existed, all derived from Asian fermented fish sauces (kicap). “Catsup” became a popular American spelling, especially in the South, long after “ketchup” became dominant in Britain, but both spellings evolved from the same phonetic attempts to capture the original Chinese/Malay word.
Origin: The word entered English from Asian fish sauces, likely from Hokkien or Cantonese “kê-chiap” or Malay “kecap”.
Early English Usage:
Ketchup: First cited in 1682.
Catchup: First cited in 1690.
Catsup: First cited in 1730 by Jonathan Swift.
American Usage: “Catsup” remained popular in the U.S., with brands like Heinz initially selling it as “Tomato Catsup” before shifting to “Ketchup” to compete, though “catsup” persisted in the U.S. until later decades.