Where:
Valley Home, California

Problem:
Valley Home Rice Company’s (VHR) business suffered due to a reliance on third party processing.

Solution:
A $200,000 RCAC loan allowed VHR to process rice at its Valley Home facility, reducing the company’s financial burden.

Valley Home Rice Company’s mission is to mitigate arsenic from brown rice products by creating a “fresh hulled” rice product made from clean, healthy rice. Rice has been farmed in the Valley Home area since the early 1900s. Farmland there is among the lowest in arsenic testing in the U.S. VHR sells its rice in the frozen section of grocery stores and prints the “hulled on” date on their packaging to emphasize its freshness.

VHR faced a major obstacle of relying on third parties to process and package its rice. This required every shipment to travel 150 miles to Durham, California for processing, and another 170 miles to a packaging facility in Modesto. The processing and shipping costs created a financial burden and created a risk to the rice’s quality and the company’s brand.

RCAC’s Loan Fund provided a $200,000 loan to VHR to invest in processing equipment to replace the need for shipping to the Durham facility, saving substantial costs. More importantly, it will greatly reduce the time it takes for the rice to go from processing to store shelves. VHR rice will highlight the freshness and “use by” dates to brand its product as premium.