Freeze-drying venture heats up in Mount Vernon

The exit of a manufacturing company from a roughly 43,000-square-foot facility in Mount Vernon turned into an opportunity for a startup freeze-drying venture.

Boreas Freeze Dry LLC is about to complete its first year of operations and anticipates around $5 million in revenue, according to officials.

Launched in January, Boreas is located at 601 W. Hayward Drive in a building long used by manufacturer Positronic Industries Inc. The facility also serves as a third-party production site for other companies, Boreas officials said.

Boreas President Heath Mooneyham said the company’s services include freeze-drying and processing for myriad industries; milling to achieve particle sizes for applications such as fine powders and coarse granules; and packaging options, including premade pouches, case-packing, labeling and coding. The company also is certified to participate in U.S. government contracting for products such as military rations.

“The food world’s a great big world out there,” Mooneyham said. “I think now more than ever, we’re starting to see a lot bigger push towards natural ingredients, and so that’s kind of pushing a lot of people down the more natural path, and freeze-drying is just an essential way to make that happen.”

Using traditional drying through dehydration, Mooneyham said food products can lose up to 60% of nutritional value, but by freeze-drying, that percentage can increase to roughly 97%. Shelf life also is substantial.

“Stored properly, we can probably get it to last 25-plus years with freeze-drying it,” he said. “We just do a wide variety of products.”

Ingredients for freeze-drying include fruits, vegetables, proteins, candy, sauces and nutraceutical products such as aloe vera and microgreens. Mooneyham said organic, non-genetically modified, kosher and halal options are available upon request.

On a recent Monday, several of Boreas’ roughly 15 employees were preparing raw beef livers for the freeze-drying process. That includes storage in deep freeze units before milling the beef into capsule form.

“We actually do a lot in the beef liver space,” Mooneyham said. “Beef liver is obviously really good for you, but nobody wants to eat it. I guess the concept is get all the nutrition out; we get it processed and freeze-dried and milled down to the powder form and then encapsulate it. People take it as pills. So, you can get all the nutrition and not have to taste it.”

Mooneyham declined to disclose startup costs for the venture, which is owned by David Losse, noting “it’s significant.” He said four of the commercial-grade machines used by the company in the freeze-drying process each cost in the $1 million-$2 million range.

Opportunity knocks
In 2023, Positronic Industries Inc. exited its Mount Vernon plant, constructed in 1999 on an 8-acre site as part of a yearslong consolidation effort, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting. The company manufactures high-end electronic connectors used in aerospace, industrial and military applications.

Boreas purchased the building in June 2024 but took several more months to start production. Mooneyham said there’s a long lead time on procuring equipment: One of its machines was ordered in March 2024 and wasn’t delivered until November.

While Mooneyham had interest in freeze-drying a couple years before starting at Boreas, it was merely a hobby.

“We were in the specialty mushroom space like lion’s mane, reishi, stuff like that,” he said of himself and Blaine Conway, now Boreas’ vice president of sales. “We’d kind of met through that space, and I had started freeze-drying at home.”

Mooneyham began selling some freeze-dried products from his wife’s garden in places such as the Ozark Farmers Market. That led him and Conway on a nearly two-year journey doing market research and learning as much as they could about commercial freeze-drying operations.

It’s a growing industry, according to a report from India-based Straits Research. The North American freeze-drying market size was valued at $709.5 million in 2024 and is projected to grow from $758 million this year to roughly $1.28 billion by 2033.

“We do everything from large-scale candy production to lots of aloe vera coming in out of Mexico,” he said, noting the company is certified with government agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture. “It comes in liquid, you freeze-dry it, and then we build into a powder, and it’s sold all over the world into cosmetics and all kinds of stuff. Never would’ve thought of something like that.”

Client experience
Boreas regularly signs nondisclosure agreements for its work, which Mooneyham said keeps the company from disclosing an extensive list of its clientele.

“If you go to a Walmart, we’ve produced some products in there,” Mooneyham said.

However, he did mention one of his local clients is David Buehler, co-owner of Buehler Organics LLC and Elder Farms LLC.

Buehler said his Mount Vernon company has completed several runs with Boreas, each one processing around 2,000 pounds of elderberries at a time.

“Communication is clear, timelines are reliable and their handling of the fruit has been excellent from start to finish,” Buehler said via email. “Boreas is also able to mill and package the freeze-dried powder, which has been a huge benefit in keeping the process streamlined and efficient.”

The presence of a facility like Boreas in Mount Vernon is incredibly important for the elderberry industry, Buehler said. Over a decade ago, the Buehler family converted its nearly 400-acre farm, established in 1899, from a traditional dairy farm to the nutraceutical farm it is today, according to past reporting. Elder Farms’ lineup includes elderberry honey, immune shots, syrups and salves.

“Freeze-drying is such a critical step, and having this capability locally supports growers, processors and product makers across the region,” Buehler said. “It cuts down on transportation challenges, reduces turnaround times and makes large-scale production far more feasible.”

A new machine for Boreas, which is named after the Greek god of the north wind, just came online a couple weeks ago, Mooneyham said. In keeping with the company’s Greek mythology theme, the unit is dubbed Poseidon. Two of its other machines are named Zeus and Medusa.

“That’s how we measure how much product we can actually put in there,” he said of Poseidon’s 4,000-pound ice capacity, noting most of its other machines can hold trays of product at a capacity ranging from 1,400-3,000 pounds.

He said Boreas tries not to limit itself to particular products, but there are limits to what they will freeze-dry.

“Being dedicated to the quality side of it, you actually have to say ‘no’ a lot more than you say ‘yes’ because it’s pretty wild what people want freeze-dried out there,” he said. “A hard no would be like a new mother’s placenta.”

Moneyham said there’s still room to grow in the existing facility, noting the extra acreage provides room to expand the footprint if needed. The company is actively looking for more employees, such as food safety practitioners. He said the workforce could triple by this time next year.

“We’re probably looking at adding at least four more machines in 2026,” he said, noting the company is contracting with clients according to its current capacity well into 2026. “In this short amount of time, we’ve developed some pretty good relationships with suppliers and now a lot of people, they actually call us.”