By Eric Curl
Feb. 22, 2023 – A life-saving “therapeutic food” will soon be making its way from Pooler to malnourished children throughout the world.
Mana Nutrition plans to produce what it calls Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) at a warehouse being built at 5212 Old Louisville Road, following the Pooler City Council’s approval on Tuesday of the nonprofit’s request to manufacture the mixture of peanut butter and infant formula at the site.
The packaged food, which does not require water, cooking or refrigeration, and boasts a 2-year shelf life, is currently produced at Mana’s facility in Fitzgerald, Ga., where boxes of easy to open packets are trucked out to Georgia Ports for shipping.
CEO Mark Moore said that the demand for Mana’s food has unfortunately spiked due to disruptive events such as the war in Ukraine and weather conditions. Malnutrition now claims the life of a child every six seconds – the same number of victims from the recent earthquake in Turkey – more than 40,000 – every four days, Moore said
“We’re here to stop that,” he said.
A former missionary in Uganda, Moore launched the nonprofit by himself about 12 years ago, and Mana now employs about 100 workers at the Fitzgerald location. He anticipates eventually employing that many people at the Pooler warehouse. With a second Fitzgerald production facility also under construction, he expects Mana to one day be capable of producing enough food to feed five million children a year – up from about one million in 2022.
“So we do have an intervention that’s sort of like the preventative, not just the reactive digging-through-the-rubble response,” Moore said.
The under-construction Pooler warehouse caught Moore’s attention because of the building’s proximity to the Georgia Ports, where the product will be shipped out. He expects Mana to move in this July, using the building for just storage purposes at first before ramping up production at the site in about a year.
With the expansion and increased production capabilities, the nonprofit is also planning to start producing and distributing jarred peanut butter domestically to food banks and other places of need, Moore said.
#StayEngagedSavannah
[email-subscribers-form id=”1″]
If you find value in this website, please consider contributing via Paypal to help cover the costs. You can also send contributions via Venmo @Eric-Curl and via CashApp at $ECrl77. Your support, no matter how much you give, is appreciated and will help ensure the future viability of this community resource. You can also show your support by sharing Savannah Agenda with others via email or social media by clicking the icons below. Increasing readership is critical to the long-term success of this site.