admin Today, healthy snacks and beverages are now as popular as ever. Companies are now mass producing tons of health goods from food supplements, snacks, meals and even beverages since the demand for quality whole foods is now rapidly increasing. And SunOpta sees this as an opportunity to introduce something new to the market.
Tons of oats products have already been introduced in the past but SunOpta still sees its potential in growing. So if you’re interested to know this company plan with oat-based goods, News Tractor has listed everything you need to know down below:
SunOpta has been optimizing and increasing its business by investing more in its capacity to make more organic products. They’ve faced challenges such as labour shortages and so on but still persist. ‘Our strategies, priorities, deployment of capital, and expansion plans are all on point,’ said the chief executive officer, Joseph D. Ennen on a conference call on November 10.
He added, ‘Demand was exceptionally strong, especially in areas like oat-based oat milk, and fruit snacks, again underlying the alignment of our priorities and investments with the market dynamics.’ then continued to say, ‘Second, we saw very strong demand in plant-based, especially in oat as oat revenue tripled versus prior year. Revenue was plus 16% versus the prior year achieving our highest ever Q3 in plant-based. And were it not for the raw material and labour challenges, we would have had growth in the low 20s per cent. Sourcing incremental raw materials and incremental labour above plan proved challenging and disruptive to our operations.’
The company lost over $3.8 million during their quarter-end on October 2 and is definitely something compared to last year’s loss which was $2.8 million. According to SunOpta, expenses associated with the purchases of the Dream and WestSoy brands led to the deficit.
‘New customer/new business accounted for an impressive 34% of our plant-based growth with a significant portion attributable to our owned brands, Dream, WestSoy and Sown,’ said Ennen. ‘Beyond our brands, we also signed a new two-year contract with a major foodservice customer to supply chai tea, and we extended our manufacturing agreement for another two years with an existing oat milk customer, which is one of the leading brands in retail oat milk,’ he added.
The quarter’s sales increased to $198.5 million, up from $191.7 million the year before. SunOpta’s Plant-Based Foods and Beverages business segment brought in $114.9 million in revenue. The operational profit for the quarter was $18.7 million.
The company is said to expand their Allentown site which is mainly used for processing aseptic beverages. It is also said to be finished this year and an expansion in Modesto, California and their ‘mega-plant’ in Texas is also anticipated to be fully operational in the upcoming year.