Industry Update

Natural Products, Inc. Adds Bakery Technologist, Completes New Baking Lab

Iowa -- January 29, 2009 -- Natural Products, Inc. (NPI) has enhanced its ability to provide technical support to their industrial bakery customers by hiring a full time Bakery Technologist, Tito Viola. Mr. Viola has worked in retail and industrial bakeries for over twenty years, and graduated from AIB’s Baking Science & Technology course in 2004. Tito joins NPI to work exclusively with customers interested in incorporating Scotsman's Mill™ egg and dairy replacers into their sweet baked products.

"We are excited to welcome Tito to NPI," says Jon Stratford, Sales & Marketing Manager. "Having the ability to run trials for customers in our own lab will make it that much easier for our customers to benefit from using our specialty ingredients. Tito's background and knowledge fit perfectly with what we want to be able to do for our customers."

To support the work Tito will do, NPI recently completed the installation of a bakery lab at the offices of NPI in Grinnell, Iowa. NPI is now able to produce a wide variety of baked products at bench-top scale, including yeast raised and cake donuts, pancakes and waffles, sweet breads, cookies and bars, and a complete range of cakes and muffins.

The completion of the lab represents an important step in the transition of Natural Products, Inc. from simply a grain processor to a functional ingredient manufacturer.

"This new lab gives us the ability to develop just about any application that our customers might want our assistance with," says Paul Lang, General Manager of NPI. "The lab will be dedicated to helping our customers incorporate our egg and dairy replacers, so our investment will hopefully result in our customers saving a lot of money."

NPI will also make its technical services available to its brokers and distributors for producing samples for presentation to their customers.

"I believe this new lab and the addition of Tito Viola to our staff make us one of the most capable specialty ingredient manufacturers in the market today," says Jon Stratford. "We should now be able to shorten the R&D phase by weeks or months for our customers by taking them 80% of the way to a successful cost-saving reformulation project, sometimes before they even run their first trial."

Photos and additional information are available online at www.npisoy.com.

About NPI

Natural Products, Inc. (NPI) is an Iowa-based manufacturer of food ingredients for the soyfoods, bakery, and beverage industries. NPI’s soy ingredients include Enzyme Active Full Fat, Roasted Full Fat, and Low Fat meal, grits, flour, and fine-grind flour, providing a wide range of functional properties. Scotsman's Mill™ is NPI’s exclusive line of blended functional extenders and replacers, designed to save industrial bakeries a great deal of money without sacrificing quality.

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