Sask. plant-based product company to make millions in merger. So what does it do?

A Regina-based company is capitalizing on the appetite for plant-based foods.

Above Foods, which touts itself as a "field-to-fork" company due to its complete supply chain,announced a merger with Bite Acquisition Corporation on Monday. Bite is expected to pay approximately US$44 million in the proposed transaction and Above Foods is set to become a public company on the New York Stock Exchange.

Above's head office is nestled into Regina's downtown core at The Balfour, but the company has buildings across Canada and the United States, with operating facilities across Saskatchewan employing a little more than 100 workers.

CBC spoke with executive chairman and CEO Lionel Kambeitzon Thursday to learn more.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

CBC: How do Above Foods' products compare with meatand other plant-based products when it comes to price?

Kambeitz: We're not in the meat comparison business.There are several billion people in the world that have been eating plant-based dietsfor hundreds and hundreds of years.

We're really targeting a $200-billiontotal addressable market.

We're not in the business of a science experiment here. The foods that we are producing, the foods that we are having grown toour specifications, that we're taking custody of, that we're turning into ingredients and we're turning into CPG(consumer packaged goods)arefoods that that have been involvedin the consumer pipeline for many, manyyears: whole seeds, flowers,rolled products,different formulations, simple meals thatare being put together.

Prices are very, very comparable to what I would call conventional, but of course it depends.For example, we have regenerative organic certified, which is a higher price, but it's organically grown and it is regeneratively certified.

(Regenerativecertification is a holistic standard for soil health, animal welfare and farm worker fairness.)

We have gluten free oats produced to a premium quality thatvery few people are able to produce to that quality specification.

That will be a little more money, as well, because it'smeetingthathigher specification, but on what I would call conventional plant-based foods that we sell, weare very competitively priced with the existing industry.

You've mentioned you value food security. What does that mean?

For the first time in Canada, first time in my life now and probably the first time that I can recall, in Canada and the United Statesthere's been empty shelves. COVID-19 made us aware of the factthat food security and the reliability of supplywas not guaranteed, and we are very lucky in Canada and the United States to have such good infrastructure that we rarely face that.

Then what came upon us was a new understanding and it's been 20 or 30 years since this has happened where foodbecame one of the weapons of war and the result of the Ukrainian crisis. We suddenly had massive shortages and massive spikes in commodities.

That has really awakened people to say,"I want reliable supply, I want absolute, predictable identity preserved quality. I want toknow who grew it, how it was grown. I want toknow everything about its value chain. I want that quality concern and I want better proteins. I want my my plant-based to have a higher protein count, a more balanced amino acid count." Those are the things that we're able to supply.

We have a complete field-to-fork supply chain. We organize and we originate the crops that we're going to need and we take custody of those. We then we produce an ingredient from them. We then take the ingredient and we produce a product that we sell under private labels orCPG.

If you control the entire supply chain, then you have an opportunity to have surety of supply and surety of quality.

How doyou maintain quality while introducing a high protein content?

Here's a good example: quinoa, considered by many to be one of the world's super foods. We have fourvarietalswhere we own the germ plasm, which means we own the genetics whichoriginally came from South America and we've Canadianizedthose varietals over many years. We've increased the protein count by over 20 per cent on those varietals.

We now have the ability to provide quinoa that used to be 14 to 16 per centprotein, and todayit's ashigh as 24 per centprotein through natural breeding.

We havea breeding centre at the University of Saskatchewan. Through natural breeding, year after year you select some of the varietals that you're growing that have higher protein, and you develop a new traitin the plantand that new seed hasmore protein in it, and you propagate that seed.

What is the plan with the US$44 million doled out to Above Foods in the merger?

The primary use of proceeds are to continue to fund our growth at 61 per cent annualgrowth. You need capital to be able to fund our growth. We have a track record and a model that we can continue to grow our business at that 61 per cent per year, and we want to do that.

Secondly, we will look for small acquisitions that we can fold into our existing infrastructure, our existing facilities acquisitions that will make our facilities more efficient then we can combine theacquisitions into what we're doing so we can expand that way.

[The Bite group]had great experience inCPG, private label and food service. They had an experienced capital team in New York City. They brought to us direct connections and strategic partners in the business to help grow our business. So we felt that the Bite group wasa very good choice as a vehicle to be able to go public with Above Foods.