Consumer demand for ancient grains is growing, due in part to their digestibility, and one eastern Idaho company is growing to keep up.

Jade Koyle and wife, Julie — owners of Ancient Grains LLC in Teton, Idaho — are expanding their milling, dehulling and cleaning operations and contracting more acres.

The company sells flour and whole grains from ancient varieties, specializing in einkorn, spelt and khorasan.

“We’re working on expanding into other product lines down the road,” Koyle said.

Right now Ancient Grains sells about 2 million pounds of flour and whole grains a year, but only a few hundred-thousand pounds are processed at their facilities. The rest is processed by third parties.

The expansion will increase the company’s in-house processing to several million pounds a year, he said.

“We’re growing a lot. We’ve grown a lot in the last three years. We’re doing more in house and increasing sales at the same time,” he said.

The company has one small stone mill, and its current milling process is mostly manual. Its milling capacity is about 300 pounds a day. But two new stone mills are on the way from Denmark and, along with the company’s expansion to its dehulling and cleaning operation, will increase that capacity to 600 pounds an hour, he said.

Its current dehulling and cleaning capacity is about 20 bushels per hour. The expansion to that part of the operation will increase capacity to 150 bushels per hour.

The Koyles started the venture in 2009 and spent years building a direct market. They slowly developed a retail market and built a commercial market selling to food processors.

“It just took a long time to develop that so we could be confident” in the stability of the company, he said.

Koyle grows ancient grains on his farm, rotating the crop with alfalfa on about 160 acres, but most of the production is contracted and mostly from organic operations. Last year, the Koyles contracted 500 acres. That grew to about 800 acres this year from farms in southern Idaho, Montana and Washington.

With business booming, he’s looking to contract another 100 acres next year. But that acreage could potentially grow to a couple of thousand in the future, he said.

“We’re looking for organic growers throughout the state. We could become part of their rotation. I think that’s exciting,” he said.

In southeastern Idaho, it would offer some diversity and offer farmers another option, he said.