In the early 1970s, northwest Paraná was dominated by coffee plantations—until the devastating “Black Frost” of July 18, 1975, forced hundreds of families to uproot their crops and seek new sources of income. By the late 1980s, agribusiness experts and local cooperatives had rallied behind a new agricultural vision: citrus cultivation. In 1989, José Antônio “Toninho” Pratinha brought the first citrus rootstocks into the city of Paraíso do Norte, and together with his brother Gilberto and cousin Paulo, established nurseries and planted 134 hectares of orange groves across Fazenda Arara and Nova Esperança, adhering to strict phytosanitary standards that ensured both scale and quality.

Two decades later, in 2012, Toninho, Gilberto, and Paulo took the next step by opening a small bottling facility in the city of Maringá. They named it Prat’s Juice—a brand conceived by Gilberto’s daughters, Camila and Izabella Pratinha, to convey the “practicality” of a ready-to-drink juice. With just eight employees—seven in production and one in sales—their inaugural offerings were 330 mL and 1 L bottles that, before pasteurization, carried a three-day shelf life. The decision to use a single, memorable word for the brand emerged from a focused branding consultation.

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From overcoming a climate disaster to establishing a nationally recognized name, the Pratinha family’s journey exemplifies how innovation, collaboration, and long-term vision transformed Paraná’s citrus industry, set a new standard of quality for ready-to-drink orange juice in Brazil, and built one of the country’s most consumed orange juice brands