The Portage la Prairie Food Development Centre wasn’t the spark that prompted the McLaren brothers to stop growing potatoes and buy a food processing factory.
“It wasn’t part of the plan. We didn’t know what (the centre) was,” said Earl McLaren in an interview at the official opening of a $13.6 million expansion of the food centre April 21.
But three years after buying a potato starch plant, he says the government-run facility is a godsend.
“It’s an extremely huge asset to us,” said McLaren, who operates Manitoba Starch, a company that refines potato starch from a french fry factory’s processing water and uses it to make specialized food components.
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The centre was set up in 1975 to fill in the gaps that lay between developing good ideas, establishing small startup companies, producing commercially viable products and getting those products out into the world.
The recent expansion gives the provincially administered centre a federally licensed pilot plant with cutting edge technology for a wide range of food product production. The plant will be inspected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency so commercial-sized lots can be sold across the country or exported.
The centre’s services aren’t free, but users are charged only for the costs of the specific tasks they have the centre perform.
McLaren’s company is the type that needs what the FDC provides.
McLaren and his brother took over a small Carberry potato starch refining company in 2002 from the former owner, who was retiring. They were longtime potato growers looking to expand their business, but knew nothing about the starch business.
The former owner offered them the chance to run the company for a year to see if they were interested in buying it. They then bought the plant, located beside the french fry plant in Carberry and near their farm.
Twenty years earlier the brothers had taken a giant gamble with potato farming: they decided to produce only potatoes on their farm rather than grow a number of crops. The risk paid off and they became one of the largest and most successful potato farms in the province, farming 1,000 acres by the time they bought Manitoba Starch.
They took another gamble with the new company: they cashed out the potato farm and put all their money into the starch company.
“We sold the tractors and the trucks to generate the capital we needed for food production,” said McLaren.
This leap of faith has also paid off. With the food centre’s help and technology, they have developed a number of new potato starch food additives that they are marketing around the world. Potato starch can be used as a gluten-free alternative in products such as baking, gravy, soups and as a binder.
Recently they received two certifications giving them access to exacting buyers. They received Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points approval that many major manufacturers demand and were approved for kosher food production by a Jewish rabbi.
The centre is also helping the McClarens’ company by bringing it to the attention of food processors. Some of those processors hear about Manitoba Starch’s products while they are visiting Manitoba and later follow up.
“We’ve been getting calls from all over the world,” said McLaren.
Food industry experts from China and Mexico were at the opening of the FDC pilot plant.
Isaac Andrape, who works for the Institute of Agricultural Technology in Guadalajara, Mexico, said his government hopes to develop products for the Mexican market that contain specialized Canadian components, and develop products for the Canadian market that contain unique Mexican components.
“We want to develop an agreement (with the FDC) to test back and forth to make end products,” said Andrape.
McLaren said jumping from primary agriculture into specialized starch extraction “has had its challenges,” but farming taught him how to face a risky business.
“It’s very hectic. It’s not for the light-hearted. It’s very capital intensive, just like farming. It’s one of those businesses where you can’t let a lot of fear and common sense get in the way,” he joked.
