The pomegranate powder is as pink as a flamingo, fine as icing sugar and emits an exotically sweet aroma.
This innovation filling plastic lined paper boxes and stainless steel pans in a small Saskatoon factory is the brainchild of Ashraf Abdellatif, president of Canagra Technologies Inc.
His company, which opened last fall, extracts the active chemical in pomegranate and refines it into a powder for use in nutraceuticals and functional foods.
Abdellatif has devoted most of his adult life to pomegranate research, receiving a masters degree in food science and technology in his native Cairo, Egypt.
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There, the attributes of pomegranates are well known. Its seeds are eaten to control menopausal symptoms, the boiled fruit is used to control diarrhea and stomach upsets and the juice helps control fevers.
Abdellatif combines business skills learned from his family’s undergarment business with his academic background to ground ancient Egyptian medicine in science.
Reinforcing his goals is a business card that reads, “created by nature, refined by science.”
His other business mantra, garnered from his Egyptian grandfather, is “plan, do, check, act.”
“Plan for something, do it, check where you’re at and act if there are any deviations,” he said.
Abdellatif, who also studied agricultural engineering, cited the importance of mapping out the business plan and figuring out every step along the way.
He gets his raw ingredients from California, but he said there are possibilities to grow dwarf varieties of the bush-tree fruit in Saskatchewan greenhouses.
His Saskatchewan in-laws, Arnold and Teresa Brewster, are contemplating those options, he said. The greenhouse growers near Prince Albert grow fresh produce year round.
Abdellatif applauds that kind of vision and entrepreneurial spirit, saying it’s what makes Saskatchewan a good place to do business.
“You’ve got to think out of the box, you’ve got to be diverse. You’ve got to have vision.”
He hopes to introduce a Canagra line of pomegranate natural health products designed to maintain heart health and relieve menopausal symptoms.
In addition to selling the pomegranate powder as an ingredient for pet foods, cosmetics, functional foods and dietary supplements, the company also does custom processing that includes freeze and vacuum drying, toll processing, tray drying and fractionation.
The plant offers Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points and Good Manufacturing Practice quality control programs and complies with ISO 9000 and U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards as a manufacturing facility under the Bioterrorism Act.
The plant, which can process 500 kilograms of product at a time in a large freeze drying chamber, has three full-time and two part-time employees.
Abdellatif cited Canagra’s role in helping producers add value to their raw goods and receive a better return, noting his recent work in helping create markets and products for native fruits like saskatoons.
Canagra is the only company in North America processing pomegranates for specific marketplaces, he said.
“Our niche is we deliver a product that fits their formulation,” he said. “We can work with a client to deliver what they need.”
He is developing scientifically founded natural health products, expected to be released later this year, and is not worried about competition from Chinese products, which he said are very different.
Abdellatif said the North American business climate is ripe for pomegranate products. Aging baby boomers want to take better care of themselves through proactive health care and alternatives to traditional pharmaceuticals.
Abdellatif said there can be no reward without risk in business, but he is optimistic about his prospects.
“There’s always risk; it’s what we do to reduce or eliminate or mitigate the risk.”
Canagra contracted scientists at Saskatoon’s POS Pilot Plant to develop the technology for producing pomegranate extract. POS then processed test market quantities of the extract.
Abdellatif said POS Plant is part of a thriving Saskatoon academic and scientific community that helped him decide to launch his business here.
“If (POS) wasn’t around, we wouldn’t have the product and I wouldn’t be in the market.”
He called POS a cornerstone in supporting entrepreneurs and helping process and validate their results.
“There are a lot of food centres, but not with the same level of sophistication as POS,” he said.
