The Midwest flooding earlier this month, which had reached record levels, placed almost 100 food and beverage plants at risk.
Supply has been disrupted from firms such as Cargill and Penford Products, which had to shut down facilities as damage was assessed. However, Embria last week said its facilities remained unaffected.
Its parent company Diamond V Mills, on the other hand, was "significantly impacted" by the floods. The Cedar Rapids-based firm supplies ingredients to the animal feed industry.
Embria's headquarters are based in Ankeny, Iowa, and were opened less than a year ago. The $10m facility includes a 36,000-square-foot building on 5.1 acres, and was designed to serve as a site for the manufacture of the company's raw materials and researched ingredients, including its flagship EpiCor ingredient.
EpiCor
EpiCor is an all-natural high-metabolite immunogen reported to have the antioxidant (ORAC) potency three times that of any known fruit, as well as to cause a four-fold increase in the activity of the 'natural killer' cells that guard the immune system.
The ingredient was highlighted by Mark Blumenthal from the American Botanical Council (ABC) at SupplySide West in Las Vegas last November as an ingredient to watch. Blumenthal said that his presentation did not represent an endorsement by the ABC of the preparations and their potential health benefits, or of the science reported, but merely reflected an overview of the science to date.
In February this year, a study published in the journal Urologic Nursing. Reported that supplementation with EpiCor, a yeast fermentate, can boost the immune system and reduce the occurrence of cold and flu symptoms by 21 per cent.
Embria last week said it had contributed 2,000 bottles of its EpiCor immune health ingredient to flood victims, as high stress levels were likely to tax the immune systems of the people affected.
The firm said it will continue to donate EpiCor until the bottle inventory is depleted.
Flooding
According to Industrial Info Resources, 93 food and beverage industry plants in Iowa were at risk from the recent flooding. In the Cedar Rapids area, some companies were forced to close their plants including Cargill , Penford, Quaker and Swiss Valley Farms.
Cargill had declared 'force majeure' at its Cedar Rapids corn milling plant, a measure which exempts firms from meeting contractual obligations because of circumstance beyond their control, on some corn syrup contracts.
The company said the closure is temporary but unavoidable following the severe floods there.
A Cargill statement said: "This means that Cargill will not be able to meet all of its customers' contracted volumes, and supply of corn syrup from Cargill will be limited until further notice."
Penford Products' Cedar Rapids plant was shut down on June 12 and the company said it was still too early to estimate total damage costs or when its will become fully operational.
Penford Corporation develops, manufactures and markets natural-based ingredient systems for a variety of food and industrial applications.
It said the only product for food that is produces at this plant is dextrose. Its potato starch manufacturing operations supporting its North American Food Ingredients business were not affected.
