Riceland Foods and Riviana Foods enter high value extruded rice market
Riceland Foods and Riviana Foods Inc., have announced a multi-million dollar investment to build a rice extrusion facility in Jonesboro, Arkansas to produce and market high value rice extruded products for domestic and international markets through their Rivland Partnership.
“This investment is another effort to move our family-farmer’s rice higher up the value added food chain. Extruded food products can be found in many segments of today’s nutrition market place and this project puts our rice in this high value market,” said Danny Kennedy, President and CEO of Riceland Foods.
“Our Rivland Partnership has been very successful and we are excited about this new opportunity to manufacture and sell extruded rice products in the United States,” said Bastiaan G. de Zeeuw, president and CEO of Riviana Foods. “We currently produce and market extruded rice products in Europe and with that expertise we can jump-start the project through which we will better serve our customers and expand our portfolio of high quality rice products.”
Rivland currently produces, markets, and distributes high quality rice flour products. Rice flour and extruded rice products are used in rice noodles, nutrition bars, breakfast cereals and many products looking to replace wheat based ingredients for the gluten free market. The new extrusion plant will be a highly automated addition to the current rice flour operation and should create five to 10 new jobs.
“The ability to produce extruded rice products is a perfect addition to Rivland’s rice flour operation,” said Carl Brothers, chief operating officer of Riceland Foods. “Production of the raw materials at the same location gives us a solid competitive advantage from cost and efficiency standpoints.”
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