RIBUS Inc closed out 2022 with the celebration of 30 years of business serving the food, beverage, pet, and dietary supplement sectors with clean-label ingredients to companies around the world.
RIBUS, which stands for Rice Ingredient Business United States, is the Original Clean Label Ingredient Company that supplies American-made natural and organic plant-based ingredients. Founded in 1992 by Steve Peirce, his father, Jim, and scientist, Neal Hammond, as a functional ingredient manufacturing company, RIBUS has remained a family owned and operated business with Peirce’s daughter Alicia Kasch currently serving as vice president. RIBUS got its start when Hammond discovered how to stabilize rice bran and extract its nutrients.
“My father went to church with a mad scientist down in Louisiana, and they became friends,” said Peirce. “They came to me with this rice bran invention and asked if I could raise the capital and promote it. I jumped at the opportunity to do it.”
The innovation that RIBUS named Nu-RICE, paved the way for new stabilizers and emulsifiers for the baking industry. Nu-RICE is a patented hypoallergenic extract from rice bran, where 90% of the nutrients are found.
“Before this discovery, rice bran was being thrown away or fed to livestock,” said Peirce. “With our patented technology, manufacturers can now use 100% of the rice, which is much more sustainable, plus it eliminates words like mono and diglycerides, or soy lecithin from nutrition labels that aren’t very consumer friendly.”
Today, RIBUS continues to produce plant-based non-GMO, natural, organic, vegan, and gluten-free ingredients for the food, beverage, pet and dietary supplement industries. Its technology and patented ingredients are used by contract and branded manufacturers and formulators to help solve production issues while bringing clean label innovation to a wide variety of products.
Over the years, regulations and consumer demands have fueled actions resulting in manufacturers reformulating or creating new clean label products. RIBUS recognized this early on and as a result allowed manufacturers to list "rice extract" on its labels, for example with Nu-RICE, instead of other multisyllabic chemical names that cause alarm among consumers. More plant-based clean label excipient ingredients followed Nu-RICE including Nu-BAKE in 2000, Nu-FLOW and Nu-FLAC in 2007, Nu-MAG in 2016, Nu-BIND in 2018, and Nu-SORP (oil and water) in 2019.
RIBUS works with some of the most prominent Fortune 50 food and beverage corporations around the world and its ingredients can be found in everything from snacks to some of the most well-known spice and seasoning products. For natural products, RIBUS has been at the forefront of the clean-label movement and in 2018 launched the Clean Label Alliance that connects dietary supplement companies to leading and vetted producers that provide top-of-the-line resources and solutions to efficiently produce clean label supplements. Learn more at RIBUS.com and cleanlabelalliance.com.
