Eugenio López Rodea , founder of Grupo Jumex , died at the age of 87 , in Mexico City, as confirmed by sources close to the company. The businessman was the son of Vicente López Resines, who in turn founded La Costeña, but in 1961 López Rodea decided to start his own business and created Fruit and Juice Empacadora (Frugo).
Three months after its founding, the small packer, which started with 20 employees, obtained its first production: a 150-milliliter can containing peaches. The can, with a label and the stamped Frugo brand, was successfully put up for sale to the public.
This prompted the company to turn its image around. In 1964, a process began to register the ‘Jumex’ brand with the slogan ‘the blue can’ and to change the previous packaging for a can of that color. This was the beginning of what is now a multinational company with a presence in more than 40 countries, according to information on its website.
López Rodea was married to Isabela Alonso with whom he had an only son, Eugenio López Alonso, heir to his father’s company and current president of Fundación Jumex.
Jumex: from the ‘little blue can’ to the big company
In 1969, five years after launching ‘the blue can’, the company changed the image of the brand with the slogan: “Jumex: the Drink of the Future”, represented by a doll sitting on a can of juice that came out like a rocket. into space, referring to the arrival of man on the moon.
After consolidating its operations in the Mexican market, the company began its internationalization in the 1980s, when it began exporting to the United States. In that decade, Jumex also opted for the diversification of its product portfolio and launched a new presentation in a one-liter glass container on the market. Years later it also launched Tetrapak presentations with ‘easy open’.
In 1985 he built the Aseptic Plant and created 250-milliliter Chupi Frut, a product for children that competed in the market with the well-known Frutsi. In 1989, another children’s drink called Pau-Pau was born.
Today, Grupo Jumex has seven factories in the country: four in the State of Mexico, where fruit is processed and beverages are packaged; one in Mexicali, dedicated exclusively to packaging; one in Monterrey, Nuevo León, and the last one in Chihuahua, where the concentrate of apples, peaches and some varieties of berries is made.
López Rodea inherited the company from his son Eugenio López Alonso,
The news of the death of Eugenio López Rodea did not go unnoticed in the food and beverage industry. Both the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin) and the National Chamber of the Food Canning Industry (Canacintra), lamented the death of the businessman.
