history of soy yogurt, soy acidophilus milk and other ... - SoyInfo Center

soyfoods production facility. In Oct. 1996 ProSoya sold this
plant to IPC and in Jan. 1997 ProSoya moved to separate
offi ces about 500 feet away, on the same road; there they
have offi ces plus a small area at the back for R&D, shipping,
and receiving. ProSoya can still take customers and others to
see this plant and its operation, but sort of as visitors.
ProSoya is an R&D and technology company. Their
equipment is manufactured by other companies (as in India
and Russia) for them.
There has been quite a shake-up at IPC recently and
things there are rather chaotic. Their soymilk, SoNice was
the number one seller in Canada while it was out. It was
made in two plants–in Vancouver (BC) and in Ottawa
(Ontario, on Canotek Rd.). It’s arrival expanded the market
for all soymilks sold in Canada; so while Edensoy and
Vitasoy lost market share to SoNice, they actually saw their
sales volume increase. But recently IPC has had major
problems their soymilk; it is no longer being manufactured,
but small amounts are still left in the retail pipeline. The
product is good, but it is mostly fi nancial factors that have
caused it to disappear from the market. IPC has not really
commercialized their soy yogurt yet, except perhaps on
a small scale for the Vancouver area–and there they were
having problems with the formulation, though not with the
taste. For more details, contact George Conquergood, who is
the vice-president of operations. He is quite open in telling
interested people what is happening. The plant in Scotland is
a totally separate venture from IPC; Dusty is still there.
A new brand of soymilk in Canada is SoGood. Based on
soy protein isolates, it is the same as that made by Sanitarium
Foods in Australia. In Canada, it is made (mixed and
packaged) under license from Sanitarium by Sunrise (owned
by Peter Joe) in Vancouver. Sunrise and Dairyworld (the
biggest dairy in Canada) now have a joint venture named
SoyaWorld. Dairyworld distributes SoGood soymilk along
with their line of dairy products. SoGood is now doing very
well in Canada. When SoNice was on the market, it had a
bigger market share than SoGood. But SoGood conducted
a national advertising campaign that cost several million
dollars, and greatly helped their sales. Brian fi nds the fl avor
of SoGood rather artifi cial and the list of ingredients is very
long, so consumers tended to prefer the more natural and
better tasting SoNice–until it ceased to be available.
Raj Gupta is now more involved with ProSoya Inc,
than ever before. He comes to the offi ce every day. When he
started ProSoya he was working for the National Research
Council (NRC) and working with ProSoya part-time on the
side. Now he works on ProSoya full time; about 3 years
ago he gave up his position at NRC. ProSoya was growing
so much that the company need his full-time presence, and
could afford to pay him what he needed.
Note: Other sources say that IPC recently declared
bankruptcy. Address: Executive Vice-President, ProSoya
Inc., 2-5350 Canotek Road, Ottawa, ONT, K1J 9N5, Canada.
HISTORY OF SOY YOGURT & CULTURED SOYMILK 444
Phone: 613-745-9115.
© Copyright Soyinfo Center 2012
1160. Ridenour, Jeremiah. 1998. How Jeremiah Ridenour
of Wildwood Natural Foods and Ted Nordquist of TAN
Industries developed America’s fi rst soymilk in a gable-top
carton (Interview). SoyaScan Notes. Oct. 20. Conducted by
William Shurtleff of Soyfoods Center.
• Summary: Background: Ted Nordquist, a native of
California, is perhaps the world’s leading developer of
soy base and dairylike products derived therefrom. He
pioneered tofu, soymilk, and soy ice cream in Sweden, and
eventually sold his company to one of Sweden’s largest food
manufacturers, before moving back to California in the early
1990s (1992-94). His family joined him in Sonoma in August
1994.
Jeremiah and Ted met not long after Ted moved from
Sweden to California in about 1993-94. This was before his
family came, when he was here by himself. Ted contacted
Jeremiah. He wanted to make a soy ice cream in the USA–
that was his main focus. He suggested that Jeremiah buy
Woody Yeh’s soymilk yogurt plant in Hayward, California,
because Woody’s company (Soyeh Natural, Inc.) was about
to go out of business. Jeremiah did not do this and Woody
went bankrupt then sold his equipment to an Asian American
man [Jim Pong of Pure Land Co.] who is now producing tofu
there. Woody is now running an import/export company.
Jeremiah liked Ted and thought his soy base was
great, so he introduced him to the packaging company,
and to Dreyer’s (the ice cream company). They spent time
together and talked about gable-top soymilk. On his own,
Ted soon met Ken Lee of Soyfoods of America (where Ted’s
soymilk is now made). Not long after Ted got involved with
the packaging company, in early 1995, Jeremiah started
developing soymilk formulations using Ted’s base, then
together they started doing pilot runs (into gable-top pints),
then larger tailing runs (into quarters) at the packaging
plant. In a tailing run, you come in behind someone else’s
product run, clean out the system with a slug of cleaner, then
run your product into the last 100 or so cases. A tailing run
duplicates your pilot run on a larger scale to check that all of
your assumptions about scaling up really work. They ran two
100-case runs into quarts–which was pretty expensive–but it
proved that everything worked. The minimum soymilk run
for Wildwood at this packaging plant would be 3,000 gallons
(12,000 quarts). Jeremiah ran some calculations and quickly
determined that making and packing that much soymilk
would be overstretching the fi nancial resources of Wildwood.
The ESL carton will get you a 12-week shelf life, but some
precipitation (formation of a little tofu on the bottom) takes
place after you add calcium and the carton bulges slightly
(which makes it look a little funny) around the 11th week
due to some saturation of the packaging material. Therefore
Wildwood decided to stamp on a conservative use-by date
of 10-weeks. So Jeremiah would have to refrigerate and sell