Houdek Serves Growing Domestic and Global Demand for Feed Ingredients

There’s soybean demand growth happening at Houdek in Volga, South Dakota. Houdek produces sustainable protein feed ingredients.

“We take soybean meal locally raised in South Dakota, run it through our fermentation process with our organism, and transform that soybean meal into a highly digestible protein for further manufacturing to feed livestock and aquaculture around the world,” said Dustin Gibbons, general manager at Houdek in Volga, South Dakota.

There are inti-nutritional aspects to plant-based meals, including soybean meal. Houdek employs a fermentation process that removes anti-nutritional aspects while, “greatly amplifying the nutritional benefits,” according to the company’s website.

“So, with our protein, by biotransforming it, we're able to make that protein very utilizable for the animals. So basically 100 percent of the protein that goes in gets digested and used,” Gibbons told the South Dakota Soybean Network, “which is huge, especially in an aquaculture environment. Because then you're not polluting the water, since what you're putting in is getting actually functionally utilized by the animal.”

Houdek began life as Prairie AquaTech, and was rebranded in 2023 to reflect the company’s expansion beyond aquaculture into broader protein markets, including livestock feed and pet foods. For now, Houdek casts a wide net in its hunt for customers in the market for Houdek’s protein ingredients. Norway is among those customers. The Scandinavian nation is a huge global supplier of salmon, and being part of the European market, Norway’s demand is for non-genetically modified (GM) feed ingredients for which Houdek is an enthusiastic supplier.

“The one cool thing is Norway wants to keep growing with us,” said Gibbons. “So, one of our big targets this next few years here is to try and help grow the South Dakota non-GM planting efforts to supply more soybean meal to our process, which we can in turn get over to Norway for more aquaculture growth.”

Gibbons compares Houdek’s aspirations to those of the early ethanol industry, starting slowly before adding additional plants to fill demand for its protein product. For now, he says Houdek will continue seeking more non-GM soybeans to serve both domestic and foreign markets.

“The neat thing with this technology is it's able to take a domestic product – South Dakota product – get it internationally utilized by all sorts of customers, and then it's able to add more value than just what the regular soybean meal is, because we're buying that soybean meal and then we're adding a lot of value to it, making it more digestible and utilizable,” said Gibbons, “So, it definitely has a huge market potential to continue growing, I think.”

Dustin Gibbons is the son of South Dakota State University professor Dr. William Gibbons. Research by the elder Gibbons and his SDSU colleague Dr. Mike Brown led to the founding of Prairie AquaTech – now Houdek. There’s more conversation from Dustin Gibbons about Houdek and its soybean demand building potential on the Soybean Pod, available on most podcast platforms and sponsored by South Dakota soybean farmers and their checkoff.