USA — RiceBran Technologies has announced the initiation of a significant capacity expansion of its MGI Grain Incorporated (“MGI”) facility in East Grand Forks, Minnesota that will allow it to meet growing demand for North American-sourced, grain-based ingredients with a minimal capital investment and a limited increase in labor.

The project will replace one of the mill’s main grain dehullers with a new dehuller/pearler; more than doubling the plant’s production capacity.

“This will allow us to double the capacity of the pearling mill within the same building footprint, giving us the ability to meet increasing customer demands while navigating a tight labor market, with only a modest capital investment,” said MGI’s business lead, Kevy Pray.

In addition, MGI will support increased throughput and quality with the addition of a color sorter, as well as enhancements to the mill’s grain receiving, cleaning and conveyance systems.

“These upgrades will allow RiceBran to finally leverage MGI’s true potential expanding volume and process flexibility while enhancing product quality,” Pray added.

The project will be designed to minimize disruption to the mill’s daily operations. The updates, which totaled less than US$500,000, are expected to be completed in mid-summer 2022.

The company has given the work related to the expansion to a contractor it trusts and the engineering team at RiceBran is going to be involved in the process as well.

RiceBran Technologies is a specialty ingredient company focused on the development, production, and marketing of products derived from traditional and ancient small grains.

The company utilizes proprietary processes to create and produce products that deliver improved nutrition, ease of use, and extended shelf-life, while addressing consumer demand for all natural, non-GMO and organic products.

Peter Bradley, chairman of RiceBran, added that, “The demand for regionally-sourced ingredients and agricultural products is soaring given the uncertainty of the geopolitical environment and challenges in the global supply chain, and we are able to respond.

Not only does MGI provide RiceBran with strategic options in the long-term as a source of new feedstocks for our high value ingredient business, this small investment in significant incremental capacity provides us with a unique opportunity to capitalize on the current macro-environment.”

News of the expansion sent RiceBran’s stock price soaring, closing at 72 cents per share on May 18, up 22% from the close of 59 cents per share on May 17.

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