USA— Red Star Yeast Co., a joint venture between the Lesaffre Group and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) has broken ground on an expansion for its manufacturing plant in cedar rapids with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Driving the expansion is the need to adequately meet demands of the company’s growing health and nutrition markets.
Together Lesaffre and Red Star serve the baking industry and are recognized throughout North America—and the world—for their superior quality, innovation, and unparalleled technical support.
“We are expanding in response to growing markets in health and nutrition but equally important as a commitment to supply our customers in mature markets like baking,” says Tom Benner, president and chief executive officer, Lesaffre Yeast Corp.
“Red Star is committed to continuing to provide world-class reliability and service that customers have come to expect from us.”
With business growing for the company’s health and nutrition markets, including human and animal nutrition, ethanol and yeast extract, Red Star’s manufacturing capabilities had reached capacity.
This new expansion will add the capacity needed to support these markets and the company’s bakery customers.
The expansion will include a new yeast fermenter—adding to the 6 already in operation at the company’s southwest plant— and other supporting equipment.
“Equipment for the new fermenter has been ordered, and it’s expected to be operational by the end of this year,” plant manager George Parry said.
Red Star operates two yeast manufacturing plants in the United States in Dothan, Ala., and Cedar Rapids operation began in the Cedar Rapids plant in 2005.
Now the largest fresh yeast manufacturing plant in the world, it’s seen three previous expansion projects and has nearly doubled its workforce over its 17-year history.
Today the Lesaffre Yeast Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lesaffre Group, brings a growing line of conventional, organic and non-GMO yeast & ingredients to market.
In addition to their Red Star yeast, they are also behind Saf-Instant and Saf-Pro Ingredients brand products.
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