Citrus Research and Education Center

Processing & Packinghouse

The CREC Processing Pilot Plant contains most of the equipment necessary to perform studies related to citrus, beverage, and by-products processing. Included are the operations of fruit washing and sizing, state test extraction, juice extraction and finishing, centrifugation, evaporation, pasteurization and filtration. Research capabilities are available to support the studies of the scientists and for cooperative industry projects.

Fresh fruit pilot plant facilities are available for packing-line treatment, citrus processing, and other produce. Automated equipment has been incorporated into the packing-line to size and sort fresh fruit by color, density and blemish criteria. Multiple temperature-controlled rooms are available for experiments on fresh citrus and other commodities.

For more information about the pilot plant, scheduling, or fees, please contact the Pilot Plant Manager, Roy Sweeb (rds@ufl.edu; 863-956-8869).

Pilot Plant Fee Schedule

Pilot Plant Cost Recovery Program Effective January 1, 2026

Objective: Provide support for maintenance and improvement of the equipment, and to recover costs of consumable supplies and utilities through user fees.

Policies: Market or industry users will be assessed the full market users’ fee; UF/IFAS, DOC, USDA researchers and classroom/teaching users will be assessed a reduced fee. These fees are listed in the chart below. Records of facility usage will be maintained by the pilot plant manager. UF Users will be expected to provide technical staff as needed. Using the State Test House for Juice Quality Analyses requires an average of 20 to 23 pounds of fruit per sample and process about 60 samples per day.

Internal Users – All UF faculty, students, and other departmental researchers will be at a reduced internal rate and will be assessed at the completion of the work.
External Research Academic Users – Direct Support Organizations (DSO), and Not-for-profit Organizations, DOC and USDA researchers will be charged at a reduced external research academic rate and will be assessed at the completion of the work.
Market Users – Market or Industry users will be asked to support research and education efforts and offset operational costs associated with pilot plant unit operations.

Pilot Plant Cost Recovery User Fees ($)
	Internal Users	External Research Academic Users	Market Users	Units of use (day= 8hrs.)	Min. Billable Use**	Usage Amount
Juice Processing with evaporation	$500.00	$1,046.20	$4,931.90	day	1	*
Juice Processing with no evaporation	$400.00	$785.40	$ 4,039.20	day	1	*
Packinghouse Services	$200.00	$596.90	$2,089.40	day	0.5	*
Juice Quality Analyses	$137.00	$248.40	$534.10	hour	3	*
Fresh and Squeeze Juicing†	$ 25.00	$50.00	$250.00	hour	1	*
Juice Color	$10.30	$27.20	$109.10	hour	1	*
Scott Oil Analyses	$10.20	$20.40	$112.20	hour	1	*
Additional Fees:
* Minimum applies to cover preparation and cleaning of equipment. ** Minimum Usable for billing. † Requires °Brix and %Acid hand sampling for Juice Quality Analyses.

* Day – 8 hours.
** Minimum applies to cover preparation and cleaning of equipment. Please note users will be chargeda minimum of three hours for Juice Quality Analyses in cases where their samples are the only ones run on a particular day and for a small number of samples. This is to cover setup, calibration, and clean up plus data collection time associated with this process. When multiple projects are run on one day, this cost is split between all users.
† Requires °Brix and %Acid hand sampling for juice analyses, five samples or less.

The collected funds will be used to directly support and maintain pilot plant facilities and operation. The pilot plant oversight committee will provide policy review and interact with pilot plant manager on a quarterly basis, or as needed, to review policies, usage and to provide input on any pilot plant issues.

Implementation:

All users must contact the pilot plant manager at least two weeks prior to date of work & submission of sample(s). Labor intensive and “Rush” jobs (i.e., less than two weeks’ notice) will have additional fees imposed.
At that time the user will receive the forms associated with the type of work to be done. These forms will be completed and returned to the pilot plant manager and the work will be scheduled.
Upon completion of work, forms will be turned into the business office for posting.