Milling & Baking News - August 11, 2020 - 10

Business

With winter wheat harvest ending,
spring wheat harvest gains steam
KANSAS CITY - As the winter wheat
harvest neared completion last week, industry eyes turned to the nascent spring
wheat harvest, which was expected to
kick off in earnest in mid- to late August.
The Kansas wheat harvest was completed by Aug. 2, the US Department of Agriculture said in its Aug. 3 Crop Progress report. Texas and Oklahoma completed their
harvests in the preceding weeks. Hard
red winter wheat states with fields left to
harvest were Colorado at 99% completed
(95% as the 2015-19 average for the date),
Nebraska at 96% (90%), South Dakota at
87% (76%) and Montana at 20% (52%).
Grain merchandisers said the supplies
of new crop South Dakota wheat featured
higher proteins and good quality characteristics.
The soft winter wheat harvest, too,
was, for all intents and purposes, completed with farmers in northern Michigan
the last to cut wheat and shift it to bins.
Millers were pleased with the quality of
the soft winter wheat crop in Michigan,
Ohio, New York and Ontario.
"It's probably the best quality crop year
since 2016," said a Michigan miller, noting

good berry sizes and test weights overall.
Yields were down slightly in some areas,
including parts of southern Ohio, a result
of some mature fields being nipped by
frost this spring or hot, dry weather in
early summer prior to harvest."
The soft winter wheat harvest by Aug. 2
was completed in Ohio, Indiana and Missouri. Illinois was 99% harvested (100%
as the average), and Michigan was at 91%
completed (86%), the USDA said last week.
Meanwhile, the 2020 spring wheat harvest already was active with growers in
Washington and South Dakota making
the furthest inroads. Trains with new
crop South Dakota spring wheat already
have traded, in some cases at prices close
to those of hard red winter wheat.
Spring wheat was 5% harvested by
Aug. 2 in the six principal production
states, ahead of 2% a year earlier during
a weather-delayed 2019 harvest, but behind 10% as the 2015-19 average for the
date, the USDA said. Harvest completion
was 2% in North Dakota (5% as the fiveyear average for the date), 35% in South
Dakota (37%), 7% in Minnesota (8%),
1% in Montana (7%), 9% in Washington

Hostess product development effort
steps up with new innovation lab
LENEXA, KAN. - Hostess Brands has
opened a new innovation lab to support
ongoing product development.
Located in Lenexa, the center employs
around 20 researchers, product testers
and bakers. It houses a laboratory where
product prototypes are developed along
with custom-built sensory booths and a
focus group room.

The new facility follows the recent introduction of several new products, including
Hostess Iced Lemon CupCakes and Pumpkin Spice Twinkies, the company said.
"The Hostess innovation lab enables
product innovation to the highest level of
consumer delight, ensuring that the most
desired products are going to market with
the utmost quality and sustainability,"

7-Eleven to pilot fresh bakery
program in three key markets
IRVING, TEXAS - Convenience store
chain 7-Eleven has announced plans
to roll out a new fresh bakery program
in "key markets" that will include new
equipment and a new line of fresh baked
foods.
The pilot program, called "Bake In
Store," is scheduled to begin in parts of
Long Island, NY, Florida and Texas. If
successful, the program will be featured
in all future newly-constructed stores and
within existing stores that can accommodate the equipment, 7-Eleven said.
10 / August 11, 2020

Milling & Baking News

New menu items that are part of the initiative include lemon poppy seed muffins,

7-Eleven

(21%) and 7% in Idaho (9%).
Combining was expected to ramp up
in the third and fourth weeks of August
and progress through the northern Plains
region in a staggered fashion due to the
variability in terms of field maturity.
"Even on a single farm, there might be
fields that are ready for harvest and then
fields that won't be ready for another three
to four weeks, just because of the type of
planting season we had," said Erica Olson,
market development and research manager with North Dakota Wheat.
Spring wheat producers were mostly
positive, but realistic, about the crop's
prospects.
"Most growers I've visited with are not
expecting any bin-buster-type yields,"
she said. "They anticipate average yields.
But if we take (North Dakota) as a whole,
the crop looks really healthy."
Soil moisture profiles and disease pressure concerns have popped up in the
northern Plains during crop development, Ms. Olson said.
"There have definitely been challenges
across the state," she said. "We started
out the season way too dry in some areas, way too wet in other areas. In some
areas that did affect yield potential, crop
stands. Once we started to get moisture,
that helped stabilize the crop." MBN
said Darryl Riley, senior vice president
of quality, food safety and R&D at Hostess Brands. "The innovation lab gives us
the testing capabilities, analytics and market research insights we need to support
innovation that meets consumer needs
and expectations - such as the Hostess
Hot Fudge Sundae CupCakes recently
conceived and tested for early 2021 production. As the category leader, we take
it upon ourselves to make a sustained investment in this consumer-centric area of
our business." MBN
chocolate croissants, chocolate bretzels
and salted caramel cookies.
7-Eleven said the fresh baked foods
will be available for delivery through the
7NOW app.
Earlier this year, 7-Eleven began offering its food items in a ready-to-bakeat-home format. Products available for
bake-at-home include cheese or pepperoni
pizza, chicken tenders, buffalo and spicy
bone-in wings, breaded boneless wings
and Monterrey Jack chicken taquitos.
Based in Irving, 7-Eleven operates,
franchises or licenses more than 71,100
7-Eleven convenience stores in 17 countries, including approximately 11,800 in
North America. MBN
bakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com

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Milling & Baking News - August 11, 2020

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