Dakota Prairie Organic Flour Company, located in Harvey, North Dakota, has participated in the Branded Program for five years. The program has helped the company exhibit at international tradeshows, place advertisements, cover the cost of freight when shipping samples overseas and modify their package labels. Before joining the 50-percent cost-share program, their export sales accounted for only five percent of their total sales.

Thanks to Branded Program funding, exporting sales account for 10-20 percent of the company’s overall sales. The North Dakota supplier has also gained a market presence in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. According to Dakota Prairie Organic Flour Company CEO, Grayson Hoberg, “We attended the Focused Trade Mission to Hong Kong three years ago and met two key customers. We’re starting to experience small sales to the region that could become significant for our company. Without the cost-share program, we would not be able to attend international tradeshows and would not have the amount of export sales we have today.”

As a result of their growing exporting sales combined with their domestic sales growth, the company recently expanded their facilities and expects to hire ten new employees in 2010.

Dakota Prairie Organic Flour Company produces a full line of organic flours, grains, and feed, including custom blends such as low-ash flours milled from grains grown for flavor. Dakota Prairie’s grains are free from chemicals.

Food Export–Midwest and Food Export–Northeast are private, non-profit associations of Midwestern and Northeastern state agricultural promotion agencies that use federal, state, and industry resources to promote the export of Midwestern and Northeastern food and agricultural products. Food Export–Midwest and Food Export–Northeast administer many services through Market Access Program (MAP) funding from the USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service.