Compact Drives for Fresh Juice

Few things say good morning like a glass of fresh orange juice. Thanks to the rise of in-store juicing machines, you no longer need an orange grove out back, let alone a hand press and strong forearms to enjoy one. Just walk into any Sam’s Club in the country and you’ll find gallons of fresh juice in the cooler, squeezed on-site that same day.

The machines behind all that juice come from JBT Marel. From its operation in Lakeland, Florida, the food and beverage equipment manufacturer builds the Fresh’n Squeeze® family of point-of-sale juicers, self-contained machines that turn whole citrus fruit into clean, great-tasting juice on demand.

Leveraging JBT Marel’s patented whole-fruit extraction technology, Fresh’n Squeeze systems deliver high juice yields, exceptional flavor, and the ability for retailers to produce fresh juice directly at the point of sale.

It’s a win for everyone involved. Retailers can offer juice made in-house rather than trucked in from a bottler, consumers no longer have to wonder where their juice was made, and JBT Marel can continue serving an important market segment, just as it has for many decades.

The newest member of its juicer family is the Fresh’n Squeeze 1800, a compact unit aimed at hotels, cafes, juice bars, and grocery stores. Yet several years ago, as JBT Marel continued evolving its citrus juicer portfolio, the team faced an important design challenge. The gearmotor supplier for an earlier version of the 1800 announced it was exiting the single-phase motor business. This created a need for a replacement that could fit within a highly constrained installation space while meeting the performance requirements of the application.

Fortunately, NORD DRIVESYSTEMS had just the thing, kicking off a partnership that has since spread across all of the juicer manufacturer's new equipment.

Ricky Negrón, NORD’s District Sales Manager based in Clearwater, Florida, supports JBT Marel and picks up the story of how the two companies met. “The original equipment was using a competitor’s gearmotor, but when that supplier moved away from single-phase in 2017, JBT had a real need on its hands,” he says. "The biggest obstacle back then was size. The machine was small, and the gearmotor was installed in a very tight cavity, so you needed a gearbox that would not only work but also fit in the available space. NORD had one, and that's really what opened the doors for us."

Wade Roberts, mechanical design engineer for Fresh’n Squeeze at JBT Marel, was there at the start. “We were redesigning our mid-sized Multi-Fruit Juicer, or MFJ, when we learned our existing supplier was moving away from single-phase motors,” he says. “That prompted us to evaluate alternatives, and the NORD motor looked like a strong fit for the application, and from there, we’ve established a great relationship. We’ve long since begun using NORD in all our new equipment designs.”

Better yet, one set of components handles everything. “Lemons, limes, grapefruit, oranges, tangerines, mandarins—any kind of citrus you can think of is juiced with the same set of components,” Roberts points out. “The only thing we change is the strainer tube, and that just controls how much pulp you want in the juice.”

The 1800 is the smallest machine in the Fresh’n Squeeze lineup, sitting below the mid-sized MFJ. It processes up to 18 fruits per minute, yielding 50 ounces of juice, and accepts fruits up to 3.25" in diameter. Operators simply load the hopper, which holds around 20 pounds of fruit, and press a button. And with just six removable parts, each hose-down safe, cleanup is equally easy.

Driving it all is a NORD SMI worm gearmotor with a three-phase 1 hp motor, while the MFJ, found in Sam's Club stores nationwide, carries a 1.5 hp version of the same right-angle drive. Both operate on a variable frequency drive (VFD), an arrangement that gives each machine multiple speed settings and earned the company an unexpected piece of intellectual property.

“When we did the design for the second-gen MFJ, we moved to three-phase and put a VFD in there,” Roberts recalls. “We actually have a patent on running a three-phase motor with a VFD on a juice machine.”

And what happens if an operator drops in an oversized orange? Not much, as it turns out. “If it’s too big, you’ll know because it just won’t go into the cup—you just pull it out and keep running,” he says, pointing out that most customers sidestep this question entirely by ordering fruit to size, something many people outside the produce business might never have considered. Roberts explains that all boxes of fruit weigh 40 pounds, and you buy them by the number of fruits in the box—a 72-count box contains 72 fruits; a 138-count box has 138, and so on. "You can specify whatever size you want."

The Proof Is in the Pour

He goes on to point out that the Sam’s Club machines provide a punishing endurance test: operating seven days a week and roughly four hours a day, they generate a tremendous volume of juice. But with more than 1,000 units in the field, failures are notable mainly for their absence. “I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had to change out a motor,” Roberts asserts. “And on the rare occasion we’ve had an issue, Ricky and the NORD support team are always quick to help us out.”

Part of that longevity comes down to the gearmotor’s ability to shrug off citrus oil, an acidic compound aggressive enough to attack aluminum. The MFJ’s drives wear NORD’s NSD2+ coating, and the results speak for themselves. “Many of those machines have been in the field for eight years now,” Roberts says. “You can take a wet rag, wipe the citrus oil off, and that paint still looks brand new. I can tell you from long experience that citrus oil eats straight through aluminum over time, and that coating holds up really well.”

NORD’s online tools have also earned a permanent place in the company’s design workflow. “myNORD allows us to get the exact motor we want for every application and get it quoted pretty much on the spot,” he adds. “It’s one of the many reasons we began using NORD for all of our gearmotors.”

The view from the purchasing department is largely the same. Sergio Correa, Site Procurement Manager at JBT Marel, has spent nearly twelve years buying NORD gearmotors, the overall impression reflects a highly reliable and solutions-oriented partnership. NORD has consistently demonstrated strong performance from the outset, with dependable lead times, responsive customer service, and a proactive approach to problem-solving. Their team works collaboratively to address challenges efficiently, helping streamline procurement processes and ensure operational continuity.