Company looking to nature for business expansion

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In late summer and fall, the employees of La Ronge Wild Rice Corporation are kept busy processing the year's harvest of wild rice, but for the rest of the year, the company's equipment lays dormant and its employees have to search for other ways to earn a wage. Bill Plunz, manager of the corporation's processing plant, would like to see that change.

That's why the First Nations-owned company spent this past summer out in the forest gathering northern plants-black spruce, balsam fir, Labrador tea, common yarrow, goldenrod, sweet gale and wild mint among them-then brought what was gathered back to the processing plant to be turned into essential oils.

"We had local people here collect these for a fee and then we distilled them and obtained the oil out of them," Plunz said. "We then sent them in to a laboratory that specializes in analysis of essential oils and had them analyzed and compared to the basic standards. Now I'm hoping this winter to look at the results of that and see what the in costs are and what the market is like in any of these areas that would be handy to us and see where we go."

This isn't the corporation's first attempt at branching out into areas beyond wild rice processing, Plunz said. A few years back, La Ronge Wild Rice did some harvesting of willow herb, or fireweed, which was dried and sold to a company in Saskatoon.

"And that kind of interested me in that it was more or less spring through summer work and it looked like we could probably use some of the infrastructure we had here."

Plunz began to look into other possible avenues for the corporation, assisted by Gerry Ivanochko, an agricultural specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food who shared his knowledge of the boreal forest and non-timber forest products. The two travelled to Quebec to meet with people involved in that province's well-established essential oils industry.

"We spent a few days there visiting a couple of plants and a couple of market companies and learned a bit about it and then brought the idea back to Saskatchewan," Plunz said. "I presented it to my board of directors and they thought it was an excellent idea, primarily on the basis of being able to utilize northern labourers, some who are already involved in the harvesting of berries and mushrooms and other forest products. And we were involved in processing, so it seemed a natural fit."

The corporation received $25,000 in funding through the Canada-Saskatchewan Northern Development Agreement, through which $20 million will be provided over a five-year span ending in 2007. The money will go to help finance economic development initiatives in the province's north. Another $15,000 was provided through the Northern Development Fund, while Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food contributed in kind services to the project valued at $2,500. Some of the money was spent on leasing equipment needed to distill the oils and to pay for the testing of the final product.

While the essential oils industry is well established in other parts of the country such as Quebec, Alberta and B.C., it has been slow to get off the ground in Saskatchewan, Plunz said. Despite being new to the game, Saskatchewan manufacturers should be able to make inroads into the markets for essential oils because they will be able to offer a product that is unique. That's because the qualities of the oils are affected by things like climate and soil conditions, so oil produced from a plant grown in Saskatchewan will differ from oil produced from the same species of plant grown in another part of the country.

While Plunz is hesitant to make any predictions about whether La Ronge Wild Rice Corporation will be entering the essential oils industry until he's had a chance to do more research, the company does have a number of advantages that could give it a boost if it chose to go in that direction. It's association with Northern Lights Foods, which markets its products internationally, could provide ashortcut to introducing essential oils products to an international market. And the fact that the company's processing plant and all the wild rice produced in it are certified as organic means that the corporation could easily produce certified organic essential oils as well.