The humble oat, one of the least glamorous grains grown on the Prairies, is fractionating into fame with one of Canada’s growing agricultural high technology companies.
Ceapro Developments Inc., an Alberta-based publicly traded company, is using its patented process to break down, or fractionate, the oat into its constituent elements. These are used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, veterinary medicine and pet care products.
Through its Saskatoon subsidiary Canamino Inc., Ceapro produces flour, high fibre oat bran, pure starch, protein, oat betaglucan-based moisturizers, conditioners and immune stimulants. It also makes Arriveen, a trademarked product that uses an oat element’s anti-irritant quality in products such as a baby wipe and latex gloves.
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Ceapro recently increased its stake in Canamino to 100 percent.
It also took full control of Vexco Healthcare Ltd. in Calgary, a human health company. And it has swallowed Minerva Animal Health Corp., a University of Saskatchewan-based company that makes oat-based animal coat washes.
Ceapro and Alberta Wheat Pool recently signed a deal in which the pool invested more than $4 million in Ceapro and became its sole oat supplier for the next 10 years.
Ceapro recently announced it is building an oat plant many times the size of the Saskatoon plant as part of the Alberta pool deal. When it started full production in early 1996, the Saskatoon plant was processing about 75 tonnes of raw oats a week.
Ceapro now controls a wide array of oat-based high technology production, something Canamino’s finance and administration manager Gaylord Styles says gives a firmer foundation for its cutting edge, science-based work.
“It gives us a higher level of security,” said Styles, who added Canamino faced many difficulties in turning a laboratory idea into a commercially viable process.
Canamino is the direct result of scientific innovation. Agriculture Canada developed and patented the process used by Canamino. The company had two researchers in 1991, added seven operators, a couple of managers and opened its Saskatoon processing plant in 1995. It now has about 30 employees.
Getting to this point wasn’t easy, Styles said. High tech agricultural processing is still a relatively new field, and getting financing for something like Canamino, which only had a patent as security, wasn’t simple.
Matching money with an idea
“It was really something traditional institutions didn’t want to have anything to do with,” he said. “It’s really hanging your hat with a company that has nothing more than a patent and a trademark and a high tech idea.”
Fortunately one bank was interested in financing “knowledge-based industries,” so Canamino was able to get off the ground.
Even with financing in place, the company had to invent commercial oat fractionation technology.
“It’s not like building a new brewery, (where) the technology’s there, the equipment’s there, you just call someone with expertise and they lay out a plan and away you go,” said Styles, an ex-brewer.
“This is built from the foundation up.”
A small scale fractionator worked, but taking it to a commercial size was a challenge, Styles said.
“Do you hard pipe everything in, do you make everything flexible, what’s your water supply like, how do you configure the tanks – everything (had to be tried and tested),” Styles said.
That has delayed Canamino’s anticipated progress, but Styles said the company is trying to get back on target and is cheered by the mother company’s announcement of the large plant.
Another difficulty was finding good staff.
“The processes and the job requirements of the people who work on the floor are not one of, say, a cardboard box manufacturer where you sit at a production line and watch it being processed,” Styles said.
“The people have to have a considerably higher skill level.”
Ceapro intends to grow by improving its fractionation technology, creating new products, licensing other companies to make its products, making strategic acquisitions and establishing strategic partnerships, according to a company fact sheet.
The company is listed on the Alberta Stock Exchange, and wants to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ in New York, according to the Ag-Biotech Bulletin.
