New technology | A U.S. company is helping to build a flax processing facility in Manitoba
Investment money from an experienced flax products processor will build help a new plant in Manitoba and manufacture food products at two U.S. locations.
It’s exactly what the flax industry needs as it tries to resurrect itself from the near-death it experienced due to the Triffid crisis, flax officials say.
“It is really good to have diversified markets,” said Linda Braun, executive director of the Saskatchewan Flax Development Commission.
“The Triffid incident taught us that our markets were very small.”
Minneapolis-based Grain Millers Inc. has announced it is partnering with Linda and Glenn Pizzey, Canadian pioneers in the flax human food market. Together they will build a flax processing plant at Angusville, Man., and also manufacture innovative flax products at two locations in the U.S.
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Grain Millers has experience sourcing oats and making oat-based food in North America, with a mill in Yorkton, Sask., and a number of locations in the U.S.
It has also handled flax, but the company’s new plants and products pushes it further into the flax human food market. It is using a trademarked process called SafeFlax that treats flax so that it is pathogen-free but does not damage the crop’s healthy oil profile, as happens with most heat treatments.
The Pizzeys were early developers of flax healthful food products, using an earlier plant in Angusville. They sold that operation to an Irish company in 2007, but it burned down a year ago.
Grain Millers said its investment in Angusville and the other operations in Wisconsin and Indiana will allow it to reliably supply the growing North American healthful food market.
Flax is an odd duck among prairie crops, with well-defined human, feed and industrial markets. Much of the crop was previously used to make linoleum flooring, while the meal is valued by dairy producers and the oil is regarded highly by healthful food promoters.
However, its booming European market, based mostly on flooring and dairy, was almost completely lost in 2009 when tiny amounts of Triffid, a genetically modified variety, was found in prairie flax shipments. Extreme anti-GM rules in the European Union shut flax out of the market and caused prices, sales and interest in the crop to temporarily collapse.
However, significant Chinese demand appeared in the same year that Europe disappeared, and the bottom didn’t drop out of the market. As well, steady development of human health food interest has helped ensure that farmers can grow the crop and sell it after harvest.
“China stepped up in a huge way,” said FarmLink Marketing analyst Jon Driedger. “They viewed it as a very cheap and affordable vegetable oil.”
However, the crop is still hobbled by the European situation, with only 1.1 million acres expected to be planted on the Prairies this spring, far less than before 2009.
The steady expansion of North American human consumption and the maintenance of Chinese demand will be key to giving the crop a reasonable demand base, Driedger said.
Flax products are common in the healthful food section of grocery stores and in dozens of other products and baked goods. However, Grain Millers president Steve Albertson said the industry hasn’t been developing its technology as quickly as consumer interest develops, which is why working with the Pizzeys was essential.
“Their passion for flax and their understanding of its nutritional and functional benefits are unmatched,” said Eilertson in the official announcement.
