Crailar Seeking Contract Growers of Flax in South Carolina

Last week at the Pee Dee Research & Education all-crops Field day Steve Sandronia VP of Crailar, formerly known as Natural Advance Technologies or NAT near Pamplico South Carolina spoke with growers about contracting for flax for the upcoming season. Flax is a winter crop, much like wheat, but harvests earlier than wheat, allowing more options for double-cropping. Sandronia:

“Our company is a small company that is traded on the Canadian Board. In the next 30 to 60 days we will be traded on the NASDQ and our name will be changed to our process, Crailar. It’s a great process as far as making the product more usable for the end user.”

It appears that Crailar has a bright future as a cotton blend. Sandronia explains:

“We just signed a three year contract with Georgia Pacific. We have an unlimited demand for the product. But we are not here to compete with cotton, but rather as a blend, we will actually make cotton a better product.”

Sandronia explains where flax can fit in a producer’s rotation:

“We are a great rotational crop that producers should look into. Its something that can fit into all of the cash crops because its harvested early. We should be out of your field by May 15 and you can follow up with your cash crops.”

And Crailar has a ‘meet and greet’ open house scheduled in September to informally visit with growers about what they’re looking for:

“I’ll leave with two points. We have about eight million dollars of equipment in our plant and we invite you all to come September 19th, a Wednesday, for coffee and doughnuts to see what we are doing and find out what we are all about. We want to build our business right here in South Carolina.”
And there’s other grower meetings in the area to talk about growing and contracting flax:

“We need a lot of acres. We hope that you will come to these grower meetings that we are having with Southern States, CPS and Carolina Eastern. We have a lot of support but need to get things done by October 15.”

Steve Sandronia VP of Crailar near Pamplico, South Carolina.

For more information on the company visit http://www.crailar.com.