116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Red Star Yeast opens 10th fermentation unit in Cedar Rapids
40 percent of bread made in North America uses its yeast
CEDAR RAPIDS — Like its product, the Red Star Yeast plant in southwest Cedar Rapids keeps expanding.
“This is an important milestone for us,” Tom Benner told the crowd gathered Thursday morning. “We’ve done a lot of ribbon cuttings. This is the first time we’re going to try it with a baguette.”
Benner, president and CEO of Lesaffre North America, the Red Star parent company, joined company staff and Cedar Rapids officials to cut an outsize version of the traditional crusty French bread to celebrate the completion of the 10th fermentation unit at its plant at 950 60th Ave. SW.
It’s the fourth major expansion at the plant, which opened in 2006 with 85 employees. About 300 work there now, 157 of them for Red Star, the others for contractors and Archer Daniels Midland, Lesaffre’s partner in the joint venture.
“In North America, 40 percent of the bread that’s made is made with yeast from this plant,” Benner said.
ADM synergy
Lesaffre et Cie, a family-owned company based in Lille, France, and Illinois-based ADM partnered in 2004 to form Red Star Yeast and build the facility next to ADM’s corn-processing plant.
That location is key: ADM supplies the corn syrup that’s fermented to create Red Star yeast. Other yeast producers use molasses as their basic ingredient.
“We’re the only ones doing that,” said plant manager Mathieu Cagnard. “It’s just next door.”
Before the addition of the newest six-story-high fermenter, it took 15,000 bushels of corn to produce the syrup the plant consumed in a day.
“By all estimates, this is the largest yeast plant in the world,” Benner said.
Some of Red Star’s daily output is sent back to ADM for its own processing needs — an example of the synergy that makes Cedar Rapids a national center for agricultural processing and biotechnology, according to Ron Corbett.
“It puts us on the map for the international companies and even other companies in the state,” said Corbett, the city’s former mayor and now vice president for economic development for the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance.
“Cedar Rapids has a history of finding new and innovative ways to grow and to progress,” City Manager Jeff Pomeranz told the crowd. “That’s why Red Star is such a good partner. (The company) fits right into our economic development mission. We are a manufacturing town.”
Working through COVID
The two-year project was completed without a single injury, according to Benner.
“With supply-chain shortages, cost inflation, labor shortages, our team has done a phenomenal job,” he said. “It was an interesting dynamic to pursue such a project during COVID, but you pushed ahead.”
Besides baker’s yeast, the plant produces yeast for animal feed and human nutritional supplements. It’s shipped from Cedar Rapids in bulk form, some of it liquid, to be packaged elsewhere for distribution across North America.
After the speeches, the crowd of Red Star employees, project contractors, and city officials snacked on bread and pastries baked with yeast produced at the plant.
“This is only one part of how you can use yeast, but it’s a very delicious part,” said Cagnard, who moved to Cedar Rapids from his native France in 2004 to supervise the plant’s construction.
“I keep telling people I was born and raised in Iowa, but nobody believes me,” he said. “I was a young engineer working on the project. We came with three young children. I have only good things to say about raising a family here.”
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