The once humble pulse industry has moved up in the world Ñ to the 12th floor of the Canadian Grain Commission building in Winnipeg.
Industry promoters say the opening of a new pulse processing and specialty milling plant by the Canadian International Grains Institute will allow the industry to develop varieties and entice buyers.
“This has been a missing link. We’ve needed this,” said Lloyd Affleck, a farmer from Beechy, Sask., who represented Pulse Canada at the facility’s official opening on Jan. 21.
This plant, similar to others that CIGI operates in the same building, contains laboratory and small-scale commercial processing equipment. It allows processors and developers to run small batches of product through smaller versions of the same equipment that major manufacturing plants use. Potential buyers of Canadian grain are often apprehensive about ordering large supplies of a commodity until they have seen it produce a product. CIGI staff has said that laboratory tests alone are not enough to entice a potential buyer because real world processing results often differ from lab conditions.
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To the potential buyer, that difference can mean a lot of money and headaches.
So far CIGI has had good results with commercial-style small processing plants for cereal grain and malting barley and hopes to reproduce that success with the pulse plant.
CIGI and the pulse industry hope potential buyers will come to the facility to do test runs.
“If you can bring the customer over, you can give him examples of how this will work in his own processing facility,” said CIGI executive director Barry Senft.
He said the pulse industry could also benefit from having processing facilities for other crops in the same building because processors visiting the building to try out one Canadian crop can often be enticed to take a quick look at the others.
“It’s all under one roof,” Senft said.
“We don’t try to change your mind about what you’re making, but we do try to change your mind about using a Canadian commodity.”
Affleck is excited about the new laboratory because it will allow variety developers to better test their products. Other laboratories and fractionation plants can do some analysis, but they can’t analyze commercial-type processing results.
“This co-ordinates it,” Affleck said.
“We’re in an exciting time right now in the industry. We’re expanding the industry and looking at ways of being more profitable.”
