Above Food Opens Gluten-free Ingredient Center

Above Food Corp. has opened a new gluten-free ingredient development, processing and packaging facility in Saskatoon, Canada.

Known as the Above Food Ingredient Centre, the new facility is expected to serve as “the heart” of the company’s future product innovations and gluten-free ingredient processing, Above Food said.

The center offers scaled technologies for cleaning, optical sorting, polishing, precision milling and custom blending, and delivers proprietary ingredient platforms to transform proteins into higher-value flours, fibers, starches and texturized ingredients, the company said.

“Our center is world-class, representing what we at Above Food envision as the future of food,” said Mike Marshall, president of Above Food Specialty Ingredients. “It bolsters our specialty ingredients capabilities and enables us to help customers accelerate ingredient innovation. This is a significant growth opportunity for Above Food to expand our customer reach and bring more value to all crops in regenerative agriculture rotations.”

Founded in Canada, Above Food has a complete chain of custody of plant proteins, enabled by scaled operations and infrastructure in primary agriculture and processing. It offers a range of plant-based meat, seafood and dairy alternatives under the consumer-facing Eat Up!, New Ocean and Culcherd brands. It also sells grains, seeds and legumes under the Farmer Direct Organic brand.

Earlier this month Above Food announced it had reached an agreement to acquire Northern Quinoa Production Corp. (NorQuin), a vertically integrated producer of quinoa. The NorQuin acquisition came just a few months after Above Food unveiled plans to acquire Sonic Milling Systems, Ltd., a food technology company focused on developing processing techniques for plant-based ingredients and products.