Nicole Astra: Welcome to Talking Plant Protein. I'm Nicole Astra. Joining me today in the TalkLab studio is Jack Koberstine, head of Sales Food for Roquette in the Americas. Jack, it is so good to see you. Welcome to the show. Jack Koberstine: It's nice to see you, Nicole. Nicole Astra: We are here to dish on the plant that is about to open in Manitoba, Canada. This is years in the making, and a major investment by Roquette. Tell me what it's going to do for the North America market. Jack Koberstine: Well, you build a plant like we have in Canada for a number of different reasons. One is to be close to the raw material source, which we are in Canada. The other couple of reasons that come to mind would be to be close to our customers. And this really, North America is really a vibrant, emerging accelerating market for these type of products, and the timing is just perfect to bring on this new capacity. Nicole Astra: And correct me if I'm wrong, but you're already the largest producer of pea protein. What is this going to do for your capacity? Jack Koberstine: Effectively, it doubles the capacity, and it balances our production between Europe and the Americas. And then, in fact, we'll be servicing a portion of Asia out of this plant as well. Nicole Astra: What do you anticipate this doing for the go to market time, new formulations and products popping up every day? Jack Koberstine: Well, if you think about the process for innovation of new products, you can almost put it in terms of a supply chain, where you start out developing products at the bench scale and go into pilot plant, and then into full production runs. And those initial, full production runs actually are tested with customers. And we develop a real-time feedback loop from the beginning to gather voice of customer, even at the bench level. So along that supply chain, if you will, there's always a pinch point, always a bottleneck somewhere. And our bottleneck of late has been capacity constraints, getting that final full production run out. And so, we can get good evaluation by our customers. And this new, this new capacity that we have today eliminates that bottleneck and really puts the whole process in balance. Nicole Astra: I have had the privilege of talking with a lot of Roquette folks in the last couple of months, with even more shows coming up in the coming weeks. I truly know that you guys are a valued partner for your customers. And you've talked a little bit about that here with even just the feedback, and truly making decisions together. How do you do it? How do you keep earning their trust? We're talking beyond meat, Nestle, major companies who have trusted you for many, many years. How do you keep it going? Jack Koberstine: Well, it is. It's delivering against that expectation and forming those partnerships. And it is a chicken and egg thing because it's, you have to earn customer intimacy, and you earn it by delivering solutions to the customer's issues and problems and formulation hurdles. And we've got a global customer technical service group that we partner with all of our customers along with our innovation group as well. Working with customers in this approach, we partner. We've got the expertise in just not just the ingredients, but in formulations and in processing. And we can greatly accelerate their time to market. Going back 20 years ago, companies like Nestle, it would take them a year and a half to two years to get a product to market. Today that's been accelerated and compressed down to six months or less. And the smaller companies do it even quicker, and they rely on companies like Roquette that can deliver those kind of solutions. Nicole Astra: So Jack, the plant just outside of Portage la Prairie, when do you expect it to be fully online operationally? Jack Koberstine: Okay. Well, the good news and the big news is, the plant's up and running. We're going to have our formal grand opening next month in November, and we anticipate to be running at full capacity early next year. Nicole Astra: Thanks so much for your time today. Jack Koberstine: All right. Thank you, Nicole.
Already the Largest Pea Producer in the World, Roquette Expands Capacity across the Atlantic
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Jack Koberstine, Head of Sales, Food, Roquette Americas, announces Roquette’s new pea processing plant in Manitoba, Canada is now open. Roquette is now the only pea producer with operations on both sides of the Atlantic. Close to clients and raw materials, the facility has the power to transform the North American market. The expanded capacity means an increase in supply and a decrease in go-to-market time.
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