InfraReady Products isn’t exactly a household name, but consumers have probably sampled the company’s products for more than 10 years without realizing it.
When InfraReady adopted the motto “the secret ingredient” in 1998, it was a reflection of the Saskatoon firm’s anonymity in the prepackaged food retail environment.
“Our customers are other food manufacturers,” said president Mark Pickard.
“But you won’t find our name on any ingredient lists.”
InfraReady uses infrared technology to develop products. The method uses natural gas inside a specially designed piece of equipment, resulting in a high temperature-short time cooking procedure.
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“It renders the products pre-cooked, which creates a number of high selling features,” Pickard said.
InfraReady makes products for the bakery, soup, baby food, snacks, pilaf and nutritional markets.
Now the firm hopes its research into purple wheat can help it break into the alcoholic beverage market, especially vodka, with the twist of giving it a healthful attribute.
A wheat breeder originally developed purple wheat for Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in 1994, and InfraReady began using it because of its unique colouring.
“In the late 1990s, we discovered that the colour has an antioxidant capacity,” Pickard said. This adds a nutritious quality that other grain isn’t able to satisfy.
The purple colour comes from anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants similar to those found in blueberries. Antioxidants are believed to reduce health conditions such as heart disease, macular degeneration, diabetes and cancer.
InfraReady’s purple wheat is available in grocery stores as an ingredient in crackers and multi-grain bread. Pickard said the company also plans to extend the product into the cereal, snack and beverage industries.
“You have to present it as a concept sometimes, show (potential customers) how it can be used,” he said.
One of purple wheat’s unexpected qualities is the ease with which it can be made into antioxidant vodka.
In the early 2000s, InfraReady began researching how the antioxidant quality could be extracted, which led to the idea of alcohol extraction.
After testing various methods, the company found that the best result was purple vodka. It was the easiest method and kept the antioxidant qualities in the product.
The vodka is under development at the POS Pilot Plant in Saskatoon and is expected be on the market within a few years.
“We’re optimistic that it will become a success,” Pickard said.
InfraReady has outgrown its original building and it has moved to a 43,000 sq. foot office and manufacturing centre in Saskatoon.
Early roots
The company has come a long way since the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool created it in 1994.
“We began as a company with no products, no customers and three employees. We’ve only gone uphill from there,” Pickard said.
In 1998, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool sold the company to Pickard. He bought it with partner Bill Hetland and a venture capital fund. In 2004, Ken Davis came in as another partner, replacing the venture capital fund.
Today, it has 23 employees and sells 250 products to more than 100 customers. The company has exported its products to five continents.
