I know that supermarkets freezing fruit used to be really common here in the 90s. My husband used to work for Coles (one of our major national supermarkets) back in the day and the one he worked at had a huge walk in freezer full of boxes of fruit. They used to take out boxes of fruit in the evening to defrost and put them on the shelves the next morning. He used to say that there were boxes of oranges in there that were easily 6 months old.