US: Joint venture feed mill focuses on swine, poultry feeds

19-Aug-2019 - Last updated on 20-Aug-2019 at 12:23 GMT

Co-Alliance and Farmer’s Grain & Feed Co. are in the start up phase and turning on their joint venture feed mill in Indiana following more than a year of construction.

The new feed mill based in Columbia City, Ind. was built through a partnership with the cooperative Co-Alliance, LLP and Farmer’s Grain & Feed Co. The feed mill is set to operate as Alliance Feed, LLC.

Co-Alliance is an agribusiness working in agronomy, energy, grain marketing, and swine and animal feed, with more than 50 sites in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. The cooperative is headquartered in Avon, Ind.

Farmer’s Grain & Feed Co, Inc. works with grain storage and marketing in Columbia City, Ind., according to company information.

Building the new feed mill was a way to address an aging mill and establish production in an area with access to corn, said Dewey Bucher, vice president of swine and animal nutrition with Co-Alliance. The cooperative also has an older feed mill in Reynolds, Ind. which generates about 275,000 tons of feed annually and served as the design model for the new facility.

“The attraction of the Columbia City site was its current grain infrastructure, siting and access to a major highway,” he told us. “It also fits well with our direction of growth the past several years.”

The feed mill will look to source about 6m bushels of corn every year from the surrounding region, according to facility information. However, it also will be looking for regionally produced soybean meal, wheat middlings and dried distillers’ grains (DDGS).

The partnership was of interest because Co-Alliance was seeking to work with an operation that had access to quality grain assets, Bucher said. Farmer’s Grain & Feed was a “perfect partner.”

The facility had its grand opening in early August and will see a “ramp up” in production based on business needs, he said. The mill has the ability to generate up to 300,000 tons of capacity a year.

Feed facility highlights

Work on the new feed mill started about 16 months ago, according to project information. In addition to feed production, it will work in contract management for swine production.

The total price tag for the project, including rolling stock was about $12.4m, but the facility cost about $11.5m, said Bucher.

The facility is set to generate large volume, complete feed or bulk feed, he said. Manufacturing at the site will focus on feed for swine, but the location also has the ability to pellet poultry feeds.

“Columbia City will be a sister mill to our current facility in Reynolds,” he said. “With Reynolds nearing capacity we will have plenty of room for growth and flexibility in shifting internal production if necessary.”

In addition to production capabilities, the new site has about 3.5m bushels of storage capacity, he said.

The state-of-the-art facility was designed to allow for “high speed, precisely manufactured nutrition,” Bucher said. It also has the ability to pellet feeds at 50 tons an hour.

“The ability to pellet differentiates us in the market place,” he said. “Having the ability to use byproducts and pellet in a challenging crop year like 2019 will help us stay very competitive.”