October 14, 2008
Matrix Parent Company Golden Gourmet Mushrooms Launches Major Expansion
Southern California media has been abuzz recently with news that Golden Gourmet Mushrooms, which produces Mushroom Matrix nutritional supplements, and Hokto USA are set to launch production in their new 250,000-square-foot mushroom growing facility. The Los Angeles Times, the North County Times and the San Diego Business Journal have all been running articles announcing the start of production in the new facility that is expected to produce 4 million pounds of mushrooms in its first year of operation.
The new mushroom-growing plant is designed to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Not only will all of the mushrooms grown in the facility will be certified organic, but the growing process makes wide use of recycling. The substrate on which the mushrooms are grown will be mostly recycled material and once used in the growing process, will be recycled again into animal feed and other agricultural uses. The plastic bottles in which the mushrooms grow will be reused for the next crop of mushrooms. The only waste produced in the production process will be the distilled water from the sterilization process.
The new mushroom-growing facility will also be so energy efficient that it set a record - it qualified for a $500,000 rebate from San Diego Gas and Electric, the largest rebate ever given in the utility company's history. Although the growing process for most mushrooms is similar, different varieties do have separate requirements with regard to temperature and humidity. Hence, the new production facility also allows for climate control in different growing sections of the plant.
There is another great benefit to the new mushroom-growing plant - safety. More and more people are becoming aware of the tremendous health benefits of mushrooms, but they are also becoming aware that not all mushrooms are equally healthy. A number of researchers have begun experimenting with the use of mushrooms to clean toxins from the soil. If planted in toxic soil, such as soil polluted from an oil spill, mushrooms, it turns out, do a wonderful job of removing those toxins from the soil. What this means, however, is that mushrooms grown in unhealthy soil may not be the healthiest to eat. However, Golden Gourmet and Hokto USA's new mushroom-growing plant is perfectly sterile. The entire growing process is fully automated. Human hands never touch the mushrooms and the material on which the mushrooms grow is completely clean, thus producing the healthiest mushrooms possible.
The new mushroom facility is the result of a partnership between Matrix parent company Golden Gourmet Mushrooms and Hokto USA, which is a subsidiary of Hokto Kinoko, Japan's largest mushroom producer. The partnership also resulted in the creation of a new company, the Kinoko Company, which will handle distribution of fresh mushrooms from both Hokto USA and Golden Gourmet, making it the largest distributor of specialty mushrooms outside of Asia. For more information about Golden Gourmet Mushrooms, visit www.goldengourmetmushrooms.com.
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