SunRice's brown rice chips taste like corn chips but are gluten free and will sell at a premium in the health food aisle rather than the snacks aisle alongside Frito-Lay's Smiths, Red Rock Deli and Doritos brands.

SunRice is sourcing the chips from a supplier in the US, but chief executive Rob Gordon says that if demand from consumers and retailers Woolworths, Coles and Metcash is sufficiently strong, he will consider producing them in Australia.

While many fast-moving consumer goods companies are closing plants and shifting production overseas, SunRice invested about $32 million last year and about $54 million over the past four years to make new products and boost capacity, in some cases transferring production from Thailand to Leeton in NSW.

And as brands such as Kellogg's, Nestle, Kraft and Procter & Gamble slash marketing budgets by between 4 per cent and 50 per cent, SunRice has more than doubled its investment in marketing while launching new products such as resealable packs, organic and gourmet rice and rice/grain blends, ready-made meals and snacks.

So far, the investments have paid off. Sales have risen from $809 million to $1.15 billion since 2010, when the group emerged from a 10-year drought, while earnings before interest and tax have recovered from $13 million to $34 million and return on funds employed from 8.1 per cent to 14.1 per cent.

Mr Gordon, who took the helm two years ago, says investment in marketing and innovation has helped SunRice gain market share and fuelled growth in previously stagnant categories.

"If we'd have stood still, we'd have seen our market share come off," he said. "Instead we've outgrown the category by a couple of percentage points."

SunRice is now urging rice growers to plant bigger crops to lift production from an estimated 825,000 tonnes this year to about 950,000 in 2015 to satisfy local and international demand.

"Since being back from drought, we’ve grown our branded consumer packs by 7 per cent CAGR and our specialty products have grown 16 per cent CAGR over four years, so we're quite proud of that track record," he said.

SunRice has also agreed to pay $4.5 million for the rice milling assets of Blue Ribbon Rice Group, in northern Queensland, where SunRice hopes to encourage rice farmers and sugar cane growers to plant tropical varieties such as jasmine and boost production from about 1000 tonnes to more than 10,000 tonnes.

SunRice has managed to fund capital growth and investment in marketing and innovation from cash flows while reducing gearing from about 60 per cent to 44 per cent. But future growth plans, including expansion into new rice-growing areas overseas and into new categories, will depend to some extent on SunRice's ability to raise external capital.

Mr Gordon hopes that a capital structure review under way for more than two years will finally come to a head in the next six months.

"We set ourselves a very difficult set of objectives – maintaining grower control whilst also gaining access to capital markets and making our shares more liquid," said Mr Gordon, who led a similar capital restructuring at Dairy Farmers in 2008.

Shareholders, who rejected a $600 million takeover offer from Spanish rice group Ebro in 2011, were intent on retaining control. But SunRice shares, which are listed on the National Stock Exchange, are trading at a substantial discount to other agriculture stocks.

SunRice and its advisers at Macquarie Capital have been exploring several grower-controlled models including Fonterra and Bega Cheese, whose constitution prevents any shareholder owning more than 10 per cent.

"While our gearing and our net debt is down, clearly access to capital markets would allow us to accelerate our growth," Mr Gordon said.

"But we do not have an urgent need for capital – we want to do this properly, we want to do this in a timely manner, but we want to get it right."