Archer Daniels Midland is working on a joint venture with a Japanese company to produce a vegetable oil that can shrink your waistline.
Econa oil was introduced in Japan three years ago and is now the top-selling oil in the country.
ADM’s director of corporate marketing told a room full of Agricore United delegates that research results show the new oil can reduce body fat and lower a person’s weight.
It’s not a new type of oil but a new way of processing oil that is producing the results.
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“It could be soybean oil, it could be canola oil,” said Martin Andreas.
“Chances are we’ll do it with soybean oil.”
ADM is now building a plant in the United States that will produce “sizable quantities” of the slimming oil by the end of the year.
Samples will be sent to major food companies across the U.S. The product has already met American safety standards for cooking oils and spreads.
“We’re quite excited to bring that over to the U.S. and introduce it,” he said.
ADM chair Allen Andreas also spoke at Agricore United’s first general meeting, which was held in Saskatoon last week. ADM is the largest shareholder in the new company that was formed by the merger of Agricore and United Grain Growers.
During a question session, he said the company has a keen interest in investing in ethanol production in Canada.
“It’s clearly a possibility if we have the incentive to do it,” said the chair of one of the world’s largest publicly traded grain companies.
“We have the technology and we have the capital to make those investments if Canada should choose to make that a viable option for us.”
Asked by reporters to expand on what he needed from the Canadian government, Andreas said, “tax incentives.”
