SASKATOON — Cutting the time it takes consumers to cook their food is the main reason Saskatchewan Wheat Pool is processing grains by infrared energy.
The pool is building a $1.2 million plant in Saskatoon and has formed a five-person company to operate it, InfraReady Products Ltd. The operation will provide value-added roasting of cereal, oilseed and legume crops for human food and animal feed products.
This is the first entirely new venture for the pool since CSP Foods was created in 1975, said the manager of the new company, Mark Pickard.
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Paul Bonnet, of the pool’s corporate development department, said the new company will be able to respond quickly to trends in food use but it is still too early to say what the actual production figures will be.
The plant, which is scheduled to open in April 1994, uses micronizing (infrared) energy to roast or stabilize a wide array of grains. Lentils, wild rice and Sunny Boy cereal are all products whose cooking time will be improved through this process.
Expanding market potential
Research on the market potential for other Saskatchewan-grown products such as peas, beans and pearled barley is ongoing. The stabilization of bran and wheat germ, both byproducts of the CSP Foods flour milling operation located in Saskatoon, will also be one of the new company’s projects.
The micronizing technology was developed and commercialized in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s. Several of the units are operating in Eastern Canada and process soybeans for the dairy feed industry. More than 200 units are in operation worldwide but InfraReady’s will be the first used primarily for human food production in this country.
Consumer and industrial food products that are improved by this process are both more marketable and easier for consumers to use. The financial margins in human food products are higher than those of animal feed. However feeds do provide a high-volume opportunity. Two animal feeds can be produced from canola while micronized feed wheat is a more marketable product than the raw grain.
Pickard said the low startup cost of the company means that competitive research and development of new products and market arrangements will be as important to operations as the technology itself.
“Everyone knows it will be tough slugging in the first few years but we have a good idea of the industry direction and that will be one of our advantages.”
The federal and provincial governments together provided a repayable loan of $140,000 to start the company.
