Processor accepts eggs that don’t make the grade, turning them into liquid eggs for bakeries, noodle and food makers
Eggs purchased from the grocery store look uniform, but not every egg makes the grade for table egg purchase and use.
At the same time, large bakeries, food companies and pet food makers need vast quantities of liquid eggs for their products.
Enter the Egg Processing Innovations Co-operative (EPIC) based in Lethbridge.
Now in its third year of operation, EPIC is owned by 130 quota-holding, Alberta-based shareholders, most of them Hutterite colonies.
Millions of eggs are delivered each month, most of them Grade A, but within that grading some are of a size, shape or colour not desired for table use. As well, some eggs are contracted direct from producers for use at EPIC without going through the grading process used for table eggs.
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“The eggs that don’t really command a market, typically your small eggs, medium eggs, anything that may be slightly off grade, stained or cracked shell, slightly odd shape to it, will come to a processing plant,” EPIC plant manager Brendan Bassendowski said during a recent tour of the facility.
Before EPIC was established, such eggs would be shipped to British Columbia or Manitoba for processing into liquid egg products, he added.
“Part of the rationale behind producers investing in a value-added processing plant was the desire to keep those surplus eggs, produced in Alberta, being sold in the Alberta market, to keep that surplus here in Alberta and add value to it,” he said.
“Because in the past we would have seen the majority of the surplus Alberta eggs shipped out to a different province that had a processing station.”
Most of the eggs processed at EPIC are sold back to Alberta buyers, he added. And most of those are large-scale bakeries, noodle makers, food companies and pet food operations. The co-op does not sell its products at retail.
On this day, the EPIC cooler held 2.5 million eggs destined for breaking and processing either as whole liquid eggs or as separate batches of yolks and whites.
“At this plant we process brown eggs,” Bassendowski said.
“We process white eggs. From a nutritional standpoint, those eggs are identical, and for a processor like us, the colour of the shell is irrelevant because we’re only interested in what’s on the inside.”
However, the eggs are labelled according to whether they are conventionally produced or come from cage-free operations.
“A few of our customers require only cage free eggs in their products, and we’re able to work with our producers and our owners, who happen to be producers, to ensure that we always have a steady supply of free run, free range or any type of eggs that we need.”
Bassendowski and the co-op members have been watching moves by major food companies toward cage-free eggs. As primarily an ingredient supplier, it has yet to impact EPIC significantly, but the writing appears to be on the wall.
“If liquid egg is the fifth ingredient in your product’s ingredient deck, you may not yet be feeling that pressure and still looking for the lowest cost alternative,” Bassendowski said.
“But I think we recognize that it’s a matter of time. EPIC is positioned very well in terms of having access to free run egg supply… We feel that we’re ready when it comes to that.”
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency-approved plant has 17 employees, many of whom rotate between jobs during the eight-hour day.
One of those jobs is checking the cracked eggs for internal defects, which requires concentration as eight eggs per second pass the sight line.
Once broken, the liquid eggs are cooled and held in storage until ready for further processing. They are pasteurized and packaged in sizes ranging from pails to 10 kilogram bags to 1,000 kg totes.
Product is generally shipped direct to the customer with a shelf life of 28 days.
Bassendowski said the co-op is also trying to develop a market for eggshells, and a potential partnership is in sight.
Some of the shells, which are essentially calcium carbonate, are also used as fertilizer and some go to the landfill.
