Agro industry is a very important industrial sector worldwide, especially for countries like New Zealand and Chile. The main objective of this research was to propose a new economic evaluation procedure to optimize the design and operation of multiple effect evaporators and compare it with the traditional chemical engineering approach of total cost minimization. The proposed strategy incorporates a quality factor expressed as a function of lycopene concentration on the final product to find the optimal number of effects and operating conditions through the maximization of the net present value. The mathematical model was implemented using Microsoft Excel and considered mass and energy balances, specific relations for tomato concentration and a first order degradation kinetic for lycopene. The results indicate that when augmenting the capacity of the evaporation system of 5 effects from 50 to 75 Ton/h, the lycopene retention increases from 95.25% to 96.27%. When evaluating the system through the logic of the total cost minimization, an optimum of 4 effects is found, but when evaluating the system using the maximization of the Net Present Value including lycopene as a quality parameter, the optimum is 3 effects. It appears of extreme relevance to consider quality as an intrinsic and integral part of the process design, as it will then be possible to identify several potential improvements in different food processes. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd.