MANA
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
-
Collection
-
Manufacturing
-
Packing
-
Shipping
-
Distribution
Timeline
| Date | Container Stage | Description | Country |
|---|
FAQs
That’s a great idea and it is happening. Right now, there are several plants in countries where RUTF is used and we are proud to advise and assist many of them. One challenge to that model is the fact that the ingredients are often hard to source in countries that tend to have issues with malnutrition. Milk powder, for example, is the most expensive ingredient in RUTF. Milk powder comes from huge fresh-milk supplies where it is dried in huge drying facilities to keep it from spoiling and allow it to be used over a long period of time. These drying facilities are rare in developing nations. The peanuts that are approved to be used for RUTF, which is essentially an infant formula in many ways, are very tightly regulated. Peanut supplies for RUTF tend to come from Argentina or the US where the specifications are regulated and the supply is substantial. Same goes for packaging, vitamins, edible oils high in Omega 6’s… all tend to be made in far off places. So local plants are faced with that challenge. It’s not impossible, but it is expensive and difficult to manage. Therefore prices of local products tend to be high. Given limited budgets, RUTF tends to need to be made by the most affordable producer.
Given the above description of ingredient supply, the carbon impact of shipping each individual ingredient from around the globe tends to be substantially higher than if those products were sourced locally. So, for example, if peanuts hail from Argentina, vitamins from France, packaging is from China and milk powder from New Zealand or Lithuania, then the carbon impact of tens of thousands of individual ingredient shipping miles tends to be many times that of Mana who is fortunate to source all of our ingredients near our plant in South GA before compiling it and making one long trip to the user in Africa.