Tour attendees visiting MANA Nutrition‘s facility in Pooler, Georgia, received an inside look into Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF). RUTF is a dense, nutrient-rich food used to treat severe malnutrition. The purpose of RUTF is to help children gain weight, improve strength, and restore overall health. It is made with milk, multivitamins, and peanut butter. The product is especially effective because it is shelf-stable and requires no preparation. This stop was highlighted because every package of RUTF begins with peanuts grown in Georgia. MANA purchases approximately 2 million pounds of peanuts each month to produce the product.
Attendees toured the 320,000 square-foot warehouse which is four miles from the Port of Savannah. The warehouse has enabled the company to double its current production while adding new storage capacity. Design-build firm A M King transformed the unfinished warehouse into an advanced food processing facility, which opened in 2025 and produces MANA’s Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) and Ready-to-Use Supplemental Food (RUSF). The site complements the company’s Fitzgerald, Ga., production and storage facility.
The RUTF product is a paste that is packaged in foil packets – similar to ketchup packets and about the size of a cell phone and easily carried in a pocket. RUTF is a meal replacement. Children aged six months to two years eat three packets a day, generally for about six weeks, during which time there are health checkups. MANA Nutrition sells to three entities: USAID, UNICEF and the World Food Programme.
According to MANA Nutrition CEO Mark Moore, the company hopes to expand production with products we don’t presently make at their Fitzgerald facility. The Pooler facility is unique due to its vicinity to the Port of Savannah. MANA shipped over 1,000 containers in 2024 through Savannah.