Leading Flax Seed Suppliers: Part V

This is a continuation of our analysis of the leading flaxseed suppliers at the base of the flaxseed industry pyramid.


Midlake Specialty Food Products

Midlake is a private company based out of Arborg Manitoba. They supply bagged and bulk flaxseed. I wasn't able to find a website for them, but it appears that they are a larger operation. They've also recently started a biodiesel plant; Bifrost Bio-Blends.

Northern Lights Flax

Northern Lights Flax is a private company based out of Surrey, British Columbia. They sell whole flaxseeds in 500g, 5 kg and 25 kg bags. Organic and conventional flax are available. They note that their whole flaxseed has a shelf life of over one year if stored (unground) at room temperature. Their website has not been updated for about two years. It's hard to say whether they have a successful and growing business.

Northern Quinoa Corp

Northern Quinoa is a private company based out of Kamsack, Saskatchewan. They specialize in processing and distributing quionoa but also deal with other grains including flaxseed. They were founded in 1995.

Packaging ranges from one pound to two thousand pound totes with fifty pound poly bags being the most common. Order sizes range from ten pounds to container loads which are shipped throughout Canada, United States, Mexico and Europe. Their flax seed products include milled brown flax, golden flax, golden milled and brown flax.

Parent Seed Farms Ltd.

Parent Seed Farms is located in St. Joseph, Manitoba. They have 35 employees and have been operating for 36 years. For human consumption, they export peas, beans, lentils and chickpeas. Their flax seed exports are limited to birdfood consumption. For this reason we won't add them to our short list.

Pizzey’s Milling & Baking Co.

Here's a company that specializes only in flax seeds. Pizzey's Milling was established in 1991. They started as a family farming operation, became a bakery and then, according to their website, evolved into "North America's largest, most experienced specialty-flaxseed ingredient supplier."

They have distribution centers in Angusville, Manitoba, Gurnee, Illinois, St Jospeh, Montana, Buffalo New York and Etobicoke, Ontario. This company definitely goes on our short list.


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The above photo is a Flax field, in Saskatchewan. The artist is Michael Lewis.

Leading Flaxseed Suppliers: Part IV

Here we continue our analysis of the leading flaxseed suppliers at the base of the flaxseed industry pyramid.


InfraReady Products Limited

InfraReady is a private company operating from Saskatoon Saskatchewan. They have 23 employees. They specialize in processing plant-derived products using infrared heating technology. Their product lines are based on the staple foods of peas, rice, specialty grains, oilseed, lentils and beans. I take it they process flax seeds using the infrared heating technology and then sell this to food manufacturers as ingredients toward an end-product such as pizza dough or bread. In this sense they compete with other flaxseed ingredient suppliers such as Acatris, American Health and Nutrition, Bioriginal Food & Science, Buckton Scott, Flanquart, Golden Seed Farms, Pizzey's Milling, Prairie Flax Products and Statfold Seed Oil Development. See more info about these applications at the Functional Foods & Nutraceuticals website.

Johnson Seeds

Johnson Seeds is a small company based in Arborg, Manitoba. They employ 23 people and specialize in forage seeds, turf grasses, canary seed, flax, peas and canola.

Keystone Grain Ltd.

Keystone Grain is a private company based in Winkler Manitoba. They were founded in 1993 and specialize in sunflowers and sunflower products. They are the largest exporter and processor of sunflower products in Canada. As sunflowers are their specialty, we'll leave them out of our short-list for now.


Klagenberg Farms Ltd.

Klagenberg Farms is located in St. Andrews, Manitoba. They export bagged, bulk and cargo lots of brown and yellow flaxseed. The company doesn't appear to have a website. It's hard to tell if they are a very small company or how long they have been around. We'll leave them off the short list for now.


Larsen Seeds

Larsen Seeds is based in Aylsham, Saskatchewan. I wasn't able to find much online info about them.

Loyns Seed Farm

Loyns Seed Farm is based in Naicam Saskatchewan. I wasn't able to find online info about them either.

Leading Flaxseed Suppliers: Part III

Here we continue our analysis of the leading flaxseed suppliers at the base of the flaxseed industry pyramid.

Cloutier Agra Seeds Inc.

Cloutier Agra Seeds is a private company founded in 1995 and based near Winnipeg Canada. They specialize in exporting pedigreed seed, oilseeds and identity preserved grains. They were founded for the purpose of introducing small seeded oilseed varieties into the northern U.S. In 1998 they also expanded through the contracting of industrial hempseed production and manufacturing of hemp related products. Flaxseed is only one small aspect of their growing business. We'll take this company off our short list for now.

ConAgra Grain

ConAgra Grain is a division of ConAgra Foods. ConAgra Foods is a publicly traded company (NYSE:CAG) with a market cap of about twelve billion dollars. They are one of the world's largest packaged food companies. Their brands include ACT II, Armour, Banquet, Blue Bonnet, Brown 'N Serve, Butterball, Chef Boyardee, Cook's, Crunch 'n Munch, DAVID, Decker, Eckrich, Egg Beaters, Fleischmann's, Gulden's, Healthy Choice, Hebrew National, Hunt's, Kid Cuisine, Knott's Berry Farm, La Choy, Lamb Weston, Lightlife, Louis Kemp, Lunch Makers, MaMa Rosa's, Manwich, Marie Callender's, Orville Redenbacher's, PAM, Parkay, Pemmican, Peter Pan, Reddi-wip, Rosarita, Ro*Tel, Slim Jim, Snack Pack, Swiss Miss, Van Camp's, Wesson, Wolf, and many others. They are not much into flaxseeds from what I can tell. We'll take them off the short list for now.

Country Lane Organic Grain & Milling

This company is located in Winkler, Manitoba. They supply bagged organic flaxseeds. They are likely a very small company but unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything about them online. If someone knows of a website or a company name change, please let me know in the comments section below.


G.H.Schweitzer Enterprises Limited

This is a small private company based out of Eston Saskatchewan. I have not been able to find a website for this company, but they do supply bagged and bulk non-organic flaxseeds.


Horizon Agro

Horizon Agro is a small private company specializing in the processing of lentils and peas for export. They were founded in 1985, are based in Morris Manitoba. As flax is not their emphasis we'll take them off our short list for now.



to be Continued in Part IV

Leading Flaxseed Suppliers: Part II

Here we continue our analysis of the leading flaxseed suppliers at the base of the flaxseed industry pyramid.

Bi-pro Marketing Ltd.

Bi-pro was founded in 1992. Today they have 70 employees and are based in Guelph, Ontario in Canada. Their fast growth began with a 'pig-ear treat' distribution business. Their main business is providing the raw ingredients for the feed and pet food industries. Flaxseed appears to be a small component of their business. We'll take this company off our short list for now.

Brian McElroy Seed Farm

This private company was founded in 1999. They don't appear to have a website. They deal in the export of buckwheat, flaxseed, canola, oats and sunflower. They buy and sell process pedigreed seed to farmers and companies in Canada and the United States. We'll leave them off our short list for now.

CanMar Grain Products Ltd.

Here we've hit on a very relevant company for our research purposes. CanMar specializes in roasted flaxseed products. They have an attractive and informative web site about the nutritional benefits of flaxseeds. The company was founded in 1984 and is based in Saskatchewan. They were originally involved in the export of agricultural goods but have switched their main emphasis to the sale of roasted flaxseeds. This company goes to the top end of our short list.

Cargill Ltd.

Cargill is a huge international company providing food, agricultural and risk management products. The company has several divisions and flaxseeds are probably a miniscule portion of their total business. They have over 120,000 employees and are based in Minneapolis. We'll keep them off the short list for now, though they are bound to come up again in our research of emerging flaxseed companies (possibly as investors or partners).


This completes Part II of our analysis of the original list of flaxseed suppliers.

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The image above is "Flax fields across the Saskatchewan Plain" by Michael Lewis

Leading Flaxseed Suppliers: Part 1

Here we start with brief reviews of the leading flaxseed suppliers on our initial list. The goal is to look at them all briefly and identify which ones to put on a short list for more in-depth reviews.

Agricore United

Agricore United was formed in 2001 as a merger of Agricore and United Grain Growers. It is now the largest grain company in Canada. It is a public company based in Winnipeg and trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol AU-LV. They deal with a lot more than flaxseeds. Their sales include crop inputs and services, grain merchandising, livestock production services and financial markets. Their annual sales are about $350 million Canadian dollars. Someone over at Agricore should really do something about their outdated website.

Alfred C. Toepfer (Canada) Ltd.

Alfred C. Toepfer is a German company based out of Hamburg. They trade in grain, oilseeds and feedstuffs and have about 1,600 employees. If their website is any indication of their marketing prowess, they are doing well.

Argosy International Inc

Argosy is based out of New York and looks to be a private company. Their main products are specialty chemicals and tapes including tooling resins, adhesives, coatings, potting compounds, specialty tapes, film adhesives, honeycomb, sealants and prepregs. Their website is at ArgosyChemical. This market is not of much interest for our purposes.

Bioriginal Food & Science Corp.

This is the first company on our alphabetical list that looks very promising for our purposes here.

Bioriginal is a privately owned company founded in 1986. It's based out of Saskatoon, Canada. They see themselves primarily as "a global provider of innovative essential fatty acid (EFA) solutions". Their products are used in nutraceuticals, functional foods, skin care products, cosmetics, animal feed, veterinary products and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals.

According to their web site Bioriginal "provides EFAs including flax, evening primrose, borage (starflower), black currant, fish, hemp, echium, perilla and camelina as well as CLA. Delivery systems range from bulk oil and capsules, to finished, packaged products. In addition to the standard oil or seed formats, Bioriginal provides custom formulations, highly-concentrated EFA oils, water-soluble EFA powders, and a line of flax-based low net carb functional food products including BakOmega®, FibrOmega® and ProBioFlax™."

Their goal is to be the global leader in EFA-based solutions to the nutritional supplement industry. We'll definitely want to investigate this company in detail in a future post.


This completes Part 1 of a brief overview of the first few flaxseed suppliers on our list. To be continued in Part 2.

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The above image is "Peppers & Oil II" by Tanya Fischer

The Flaxseed Industry: Who Benefits from Exponential Growth?

Let's assume that demand for flax seeds is about to rise exponentially, as people discover it is the most viable and cheapest source of omega 3 essential fatty acids, and as world fish stocks (the other major omega 3 fats) are depleted and polluted.

We'd also need to assume that the industrial demand (non-dietary) for flaxseed will also increase, or at least stay constant. (The industrial use of flaxseed is by far the larger of the two markets at this time).

Is there a good potential to profit from this trend by buying the stock of flaxseed companies?

The majority of flaxseed is now being produced in Canada. According to the Flax Council of Canada, the main suppliers of flaxseed are the following companies. Many of them are U.S. companies:


Agricore United
Alfred C. Toepfer (Canada) Ltd.
Argosy International Inc
Bioriginal Food & Science Corp.
Bi-pro Marketing Ltd.
Brian McElroy Seed Farm
CanMar Grain Products Ltd.
Cargill Ltd.
Cloutier Agra Seeds Inc.
ConAgra Grain, Canada
Country Lane Organic Grain & Milling
G.H.Schweitzer Enterprises Limited
Horizon Agro
InfraReady Products Limited
Johnson Seeds
Klagenberg Farms Ltd.
Larsen Seeds
Loyns Seed Farm
Midlake Specialty Food Products
Northern Lights Flax
Northern Quinoa Corp
Parent Seed Farms Ltd.
PizzeyÂ’s Milling & Baking Co.
Port Royal Mills
Prairie Flax Products, Inc.
Randolph & James Flax Mills Ltd.
Sabourin Seed Service Ltd.
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool
Triple S Seeds Ltd.
Wiebe Ventures Inc.

Over the next few weeks, we'll look more closely at these companies, and try to determine if any of them would make excellent stock portfolio investments based on the assumption that demand for flaxseed is about to witness exponential growth over the next couple of decades.

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The above image is "Flax and canola fields, Saskatchewan, Canada" by Michael Lewis