From chips to cheers: Montreal company makes gin from potato scraps

Quebec snack food company Yum Yum Krispy Kernels churns out a lot ofpotato chips each year, and there is a mountain of leftover bitsof potato that don't get used.

Normally, thosescraps would end up inthe garbage bin.

Enter Loop Mission, a Montreal company that makes fruit juicesfrom unsold produce andbeerwith recycled grains.

Loop's latest venture into the eco-friendly beverage market is Loop gin alcohol made from wastepotatoes and grains.

"We look at what is wasted in the food industry and try to repurpose it into something new," saidJulie Poitras-Saulnier, Loop's president andco-founder.

Faced with a pile of potatoes, the company partnered withDistillerie Mariana in Louiseville, Que., to make a new product that hit SAQ shelves this month.

Poitras-Saulniersaid they chose the Louiseville companyfor its "grain-to-bottle" approach because Distillerie Mariana already had all the skills to produce the alcohol from raw materials.

Every bottle of Loop gin has eight upcycled potatoes in it, she explained, as well as lime-and-ginger flavouring from rescued produce.

She said in the first year, the company's goal is to rescue 24 tonnes of potato cuttings.

Making gin exclusively from fermented potatoes is a more expensive process than the usual method, which would normally drive up the price per bottle, said Poitras-Saulnier.

To keep itaffordable it's currently priced at $39 the company opted for a mix of potato and grain alcohol.

"We want to make it accessible," she said. "We didn't want to make somethingreally premium."

Soap from vegan fast-food cooking oil

At the same time as its gin offering, Loop islaunching a line of soap made from overstock vegetable oil and organic sunflower oil.

The oil comes from a vegan fast-food chain, she said, but once it's turned into soap it doesn't retain any food odours.

All the products follow the same circular economy philosophy,thus the company's name Loop Mission.

The idea is that itcan find sustainable uses for products that have already had a life somewhere elseor have been dismissed as unfit for sale.

"We want to be an alternative in the food industry," saidPoitras-Saulnier. "We want people to understand the concept behind the brand."