HENDRY COUNTY, Fla.- In Florida, it's no secret, citrus reigns supreme. Citrus groves cover more than half a million acres of land in the Sunshine State.

From all those oranges, comes a lot of orange juice, among other things. WINK News got a firsthand look at how it's made, from tree to table. And what we discovered, may surprise you.

It's a breakfast basic. A carton of orange juice can be found in most refrigerators across America. Chances are you've had a glass of OJ that came from Southern Gardens Citrus.

"We can produce up to 600,000 gallons of orange juice a day," Southern Gardens Citrus President Ricke Kress said.

Thats enough juice to fill an olympic-sized swimming pool.

"Just here at Southern Gardens, we're about 10 percent of the citrus processing in the entire state of Florida," Southern Gardens Vice President and General Manager Tris Chapman said.

The plant, tucked away off State Road 80 just outside of Clewiston, operates like a fine-tuned orchestra.

Chapman, a former Florida Citrus Commissioner and current Hendry County Commissioner, is the conductor.

"We're the newest citrus processing facility in the world, and we're the most efficient in the world," Chapman said.

The moment the oranges arrive from the groves, they're dumped on a series of conveyor belts bound for the juicing room.

They're sprayed down, sorted through and squeezed in a matter of minutes!
     
Rows of machines can juice 25,000 oranges a minute. The plant juices more oranges than California, Arizona, Texas and the country of Mexico combined.

But there's more to squeeze out of an orange than just the juice.

"If it comes across the scale and we pay for it, we want to see something from it," Kress said. "We'll take the oil, we'll take the essence, the flavor, we'll actually take the remaining liquid in there, which will be evaporated and turned in to molasses and sold as another item. And then we take the remaining peel and dry it and sell it as animal feed."

This creates added revenue streams at a critical time when competition is fierce.

"Orange juice is a world commodity," Kress said. "We compete against Brazil. We compete against Mexico. Those are the two primary areas where oranges are sold, but we also compete against every other beverage product."
     
And in the groves, there's the persistent threat of canker and greening disease coupled with a shortage of local workers with the stamina it takes to pick the fruit.

Despite those challenges, Southern Gardens remains optimistic that orange juice will be a staple for years to come.

"Florida citrus is the benchmark no matter where you go in the world for quality in the entire industry," Chapman said. "So we're very pleased about that. We have a great basic product to start with and so we think we're going to continue here in the state of Florida for a long time in the future."

Kress is confident, too. "We're a major processor. We're a major grower. We're not going away."