In view of understanding colour instability of pasteurised orange juice during storage, to the best of our knowledge, this study reports for the first time in a systematic and quantitative way on a range of changes in specific quality parameters as a function of time and as well as temperature (20–42°C). A zero-order (°Brix, fructose, glucose), a first-order (vitamin C), a second-order (sucrose) and a fractional conversion model (oxygen) were selected to model the evolution of the parameters between parentheses. Activation energies ranged from 22 to 136kJmol −1 , HMF formation being the most temperature sensitive. High correlations were found between sugars, ascorbic acid, their degradation products (furfural and HMF) and total colour difference (ΔE ∗ ). Based on PLS regression, the importance of the quality parameters for colour degradation was ranked relatively among each other: the acid-catalysed degradation of sugars and ascorbic acid degradation reactions appeared to be important for browning development in pasteurised orange juice during ambient storage.