TA Foods Ltd. in Yorkton has quietly been forging markets for its flax products in markets around the world.
"We sell oil all over the world," said company head Terry Popowich, noting sales include bulk sales to Honduras where it is processed by Mazola Oil, with other sales to Columbia, Korea, Indonesia and China among others.
The Chinese market is a new one for TA Foods, and one Popowich believes will grow in importance moving forward.
Interest in the market had TA Foods participate in a Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership-organized trade mission to a trade show in Shanghai last October.
"It's going to be a good market for us," predicted Popowich.
The trip with STEP was promising enough that this spring TA Foods was back in China this spring, this time going it alone.
"We put our booth in a Beijing at an edible oil trade show We were the only Canadian company in the trade show, which was to our benefit," he said, adding " we came back from Beijing with contracts."
In terms of flax oil Popowich said the Chinese "use a lot now," but he sees the market growing.
"The Chinese people are becoming a lot more health conscious," suggested Popowich, adding with growing incomes they have the money to focus on better food.
And with 1.3 billion Chinese, the market potential is truly massive.
"You only need a small portion of them to start using it," he said.
The market is one where TA Foods will be marketing its own product line. Popowich said being processed in Canada, bottle here, and shipped to China is actually a major selling point. He said the Chinese people have some major concerns about food safety in terms of domestic production. They look at the systems in the United States, New Zealand and Canada as "favourites for the food safety."
The Chinese sales will be for bottled oil under the TA Foods label, a label which has been translated to Chinese to access the market.
"It's important for them to see it's a sealed product with Canadian standards," he said.
So why flax oil among the numerous edible vegetable oil alternatives out there?
"It has the Omega 3s. That's one of the biggest things. It's the same, but slightly different from fish oils," said Popowich. "It's a healthy oil."
Flax seed is one of the best sources for the essential fatty acid alpha linolenic acid, detailed the company's website at www.tafoods.ca
Popowich said the lignans in flax are also part of the health appeal of the oil.
"The lignans that are in flax are known to help in cancer, especially breast cancer," he said.
"Lignans are natural plant chemicals. Flax seeds are the richest source of lignans," detailed the website.
"Lignans boost the productions of a substance attached to estrogen and carries it out of the body.
"Researchers also believe lignans to have antioxidant properties. Flax seed has 75 to 800 percent more lignans than other vegetables and grains! Making flax seed worth the investment."
Popowich said the more aware people become of the potential health benefits of flax, the more demand there will be, both domestically, and for export. He added it will never be the market of canola oil frying potatoes in major fast food chains, because "it's a different type of oil," but it is a growing health niche.
Utilizing the oil in a diet is easy too, offered Popowich, noting the oil can be added to smoothies, used in salad dressing, or simply added to baking.
"That's a great way of getting it into a diet in muffins and your bread," he said.
While the primary product is oil, the meal left over from the extrusion process is also finding a market, particularly when crushing golden flax.
"The golden flax we sell a lot of the meal to Poland," said Popowich. "They use the meal as an additive in bread and muffins. It's high in protein, and still has a lot of oil in it."
The production facility located on Myrtle Ave. in the city was started about half a dozen years ago, TA Foods having started on Popwich's home acreage north of the city back in 2003.
"We outgrew the acreage location," he said. "This came available for sale."
The city-location has been a good one said Popowich, especially for staff. He added at present the plant employs 10.
"The last three years we've been doubling and doubling again (in terms of production)," he said, adding he expects growth to continue.
For Popowich TA Foods is a second food processing business start-up having previously launched Popowich Milling which made cereal from oats. That business would eventually be sold becoming what is today Grain Millers north of the city.
That experience "did help," he said. "I kind of knew some of the things to expect."
However, the oat sector has only a handful of companies involved; Quaker State, Can-Oat Milling and a couple of others. Popowich said by comparison the vegetable oil sector is massive.
"There's lots of people in North America doing flax oil," he said, adding the broader vegetable oil business is international and diverse. " Certainly we had to learn the market."
The raw product for the plant is sourced as close to home as possible.
"We purchase flax from farmers," said Popowich, with production coming from producers across most of Saskatchewan and Manitoba
The flax is then stored, processed and marketed.
In terms of on-site storage TA Foods was before Yorkton Council recently to secure the go-ahead to add hopper-bottom bins to the site, work which Popowich said has been completed.
As for the production side of the plant the flax seed is crushed, with the oil cold pressed out of the resulting meal. The process being similar to what is carried out at the two larger-scale canola crushing facilities in the city.
TA Foods then markets the oil in a number of ways, explained Popowich.
The first has oil bottled in 250 and 500 millilitre bottles and sold through retail outlets under the TA Foods label.
In other instances the facility bottles the oil under licence to other labels.
And then there are bulk oil sales, said Popowich, where large totes of oil are sold and shipped for further processing.
Popowich said the company process both regular and organic flax.
The company is anticipating growth in terms of production, and are scaling up for that, although that growth "has to be slow and steady," said Popowich.
At present TA Foods processes about 1500 tonnes annually, but Popowich said he sees that growing to 4-5000 tonnes in the immediate future, with China being a major contributor to that.
The tonnage may not seem large, but Popowich noted, "It doesn't take a lot of flax to make a whole lot of retail bottles."
Flax crushes out at 42-48 per cent, said Popowich.
With growth in production will come further plant expansion.
"We have capacity in our processing," he said, adding they have "ran out of space for packaging.
"We're certainly looking to expand that."
The company owns property to the north of the existing plant, and could build, but is at present still weighing options.
One thing Popowich is not worried about as the company grows is the availability of flax.
"The supply from farmers is really not a problem," he said, adding even at times like now when canola and wheat prices are high, farmers need an alternative for crop rotations, "and flax is one of the choices."
That said, when general commodity prices are higher, so too are flax costs for TA Foods.
"The margins get tighter," he said, adding it is hard to pass on added production costs to their customers, especially those buying oil in bulk.
