NutraCea Facility Unveiled

NutraCea turns rice bran —long considered a waste byproduct of rice milling —into nutritious food products and food ingredients.

10/06/08 A company with one-of-akind technology celebrated the grand opening Friday of its newest facility in Southwest Louisiana.

NutraCea, based in Phoenix and with facilities worldwide, specializes in stabilized rice bran and will produce 30,000 tons annually at its east Lake Charles facility on La. 397. The plant also has a 25,000-squarefoot warehouse that will serve as a central distribution center for NutraCea products.

NutraCea turns rice bran —long considered a waste byproduct of rice milling —into nutritious food products and food ingredients.

Rice bran becomes rancid within hours after the milling process because of an enzyme it contains. NutraCea's process takes the bran as it is removed during milling and neutralizes the enzyme — reating a high-nutrient ingredient with a one-year shelf life.

"Our technology takes the most underutilized food resource in the world —with 60 million tons produced annually throughout the world —and turns it into a very nutritious, shelf stable food," NutraCea President and CEO Brad Edson said. "It's an ingredient that can be used in meat, cereal, grain, doughnuts, pasta and many other foods, and we have the sole technology to do this."

"Rice bran is a product that traditionally has no value at all —it was basically given away," said Rene Simon, assistant commissioner with the state Department of Agriculture. "Now, NutraCea has developed a technology where it can be stabilized and has a shelf life and now has a food use. "It can go direct consumption to humans and it can be used in animal feed like it had been, but now has nutritional value," Simon added.

The Lake Charles plant is a "Stage 1" facility that takes the rice bran during milling and through a combination of heat, water and pressure creates the stabilized rice bran, which is dried and packaged for shipment to NutraCea's "Stage 2" facilities.

The "Stage 2" facilities turn the bran into three products —RiBalance, RiSolubles and RiFiber —that are packaged in bulk containers for finished food manufacturers and humanitarian relief or in canisters for retail consumer sales.

"We are very pleased to be a part of this community," Edson said. "There is a food crisis in the world with rising costs and not enough food to go around."

"Stabilized rice bran is an emerging food ingredient that offers exceptional possibilities in all sorts of foods," he said.