Ancient Brands Milling has announced plans to invest $26.5 million to relocate and expand its puffed grain capacity in Dyersville. Ancient Brands is a manufacturer of organic and GMO-free puffed grains for use in cereals, granola, energy bars and plant-based alternatives.

As part of the investment, Ancient Brands plans to build a new 92,000-square-foot facility in Dyersville to replace the facility it will be operating in September 2020 in the city of The Andersons, Inc. part of the acquisition of Nu-World Foods from Tella Atlantic Holdings.

“The current expansion is really being driven by an extremely high demand for what we currently do, which is gluten-free, allergen-free, organic and non-GMO puffed grains,” said Patrick Hemminger, president of Ancient Brands. “And so we’re at or close to capacity on capacity-limited equipment. The equipment we have now does not allow us to upgrade or increase utilization. So that’s really led us to look closely at ways to increase that capacity and the availability of our high-quality ingredients and capabilities, and we really looked at that at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021.”

Mr Hemminger said current capacity is around 2.5 million pounds of puffed grains per year, a total that will increase significantly with expansion.

“We are acquiring two new high volume lines from our equipment partner in Europe,” he explained. “So we’ll bring in two separate lines and take our current line out of service…By bringing these two lines in, our gluten-free, allergen-free capacity will increase to about 10 million lbs per year. And then we’ll add the ability to also gluten-based or wheat-based grains, and that capacity will be over 20 million lbs per year