Gearing Up For Valued-Added Crops

Key Personnel

Carl Dickinson, CEO/President

Fran Swain, CFO

Brent Reichmuth, SVP, Operations

Jeff Bechard, SVP, Grain

Jeff Ingalls, SVP, Energy

Nic McCarthy, SVP, Agronomy

Doug Rowse, SVP, Feed

As Central Valley Ag (CVA) entered early 2020, the York, NE-based cooperative knew it had to upgrade its shuttle-loading facility in Monroe, NE.

According to Senior Vice President of Grain Jeff Bechard, the 7-million-bushel concrete and flat storage elevator, acquired by the coop in the mid 1990s, needed to increase its receiving capability, replace and improve rail loadout equipment, and add storage to improve its flexibility to handle a greater volume of valued-added crops.

Over the past 10 years, Bechard says the 12,000- plus-member coop – which has facilities in 52 communities across Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas – has seen its members grow more food-grade corn and soybeans. Bechard, who has been in the grain industry for 38 years and with CVA since 2021, adds, “This means we have been handling and shipping an increasing amount of these value-added grains.”

To diversify from a corn- and soybean-handling elevator to offering more segregation capabilities and providing more unloading speed meant the Monroe location was due for an upgrade.

To meet this need, CVA conducted a bidding process in 2020 to add concrete storage and to replace an existing bulk weigh system with a higher-capacity one. EBM Construction, Norfolk, NE, was awarded the project.

According to Brent Reichmuth, CVA senior vice president of operations, EBM Construction has been a great partner for CVA over the years. “They sit very close to many of our locations and routinely help us with repair work that allows us to continue to serve our member owners,” he says.

CVA and EBM Construction began design work on the project in 2020. The multi-phase project broke ground in December 2021 and foundations for the three concrete silos began in January 2022. Pouring for the three concrete silos started in May. While the storage and handling system was being constructed, the facility’s existing bulk weigher was torn down and replaced. Completion was in July 2023 in time for the fall harvest.

The project included three new McPherson Concrete Storage Systems jumpform silos. The flat bottom tanks, 32-feet in diameter and 132 feet tall, each store 179,000 bushels.

Each silo has two 30-hp AGI Airlanco centrifugal fans and one 5-hp roof exhauster to provide 1/10 cfm per bushel of aeration for corn. Each tank also is equipped with five Tri-State Grain Conditioning Systems temperature cables and BinMaster high level indicators. One of the concrete silos has a truck draw-off spout.

To fill the silos, a new 1,000-bushel receiving pit was installed adjacent to the silos. The pit, which has an AGI Airlanco dust collection system, feeds a 20,000-bph Schlagel bucket elevator which is outfitted with two rows of 16x8 Maxi-Lift Tiger CC elevator buckets mounted on a Continental belt supplied by Applied Power Products.

The leg deposits grain into a Schlagel four-duct, full-round distributor which feeds a 20,000-bph Ferrell-Ross drag scalper or bypasses it to another Schlagel four-duct, full round distributor that spouts directly to two of the concrete silos or to a 20,000-bph AGI Hi Roller enclosed belt conveyor feeding the third silo. A fourth spout off the second distributor feeds a 150-foot long, 20,000-bph AGI Hi Roller enclosed belt conveyor, supported by a LeMar 6-foot-x-140-foot catwalk. It moves grain to the 18 silos in the existing north concrete elevator. This new receiving system allows the elevator to direct grain to all but five tanks in the entire facility.

Grain is reclaimed from the silos via a 60,000-bph AGI Hi Roller enclosed belt conveyor housed in a 10-foot-6-inch-x-7-foot tall above-ground tunnel back to the 60,000-bph shipping leg. A Bin Gator 10,000-bph paddle-type bin sweep assists with the cleanout of each tank.

While the silos were being built, EBM removed the facility’s existing 20,000-bph bulk weigher and installed a new 65,000-bph C&A Scale bulk weigher utilizing an Greenstone Systems oneWeigh™ bulk scale system. A new 60,000-bph Schlagel bucket elevator outfitted with two rows of 28x10 Maxi-Lift Tiger CC elevator buckets mounted on a Continental belt supplied by Applied Power Products was installed to feed the bulk weigher. The bulkweigher can receive grain from either the three new silos via a 60,000-bph above ground AGI Hi Roller enclosed belt conveyor or the existing 60,000-bph AGI Hi Roller transfer enclosed belt conveyor coming from the north storage tanks.

Grain Loading

The facility sits on the Nebraska Central Railroad Company (NCRC), a former Union Pacific (UP) shortline, and connects to the UP mainline 18 miles away in Columbus, NE.

Grain shipments vary year-to-year, Bechard says, depending on dry weather, export markets, and local processor demand.

According to Bechard, the elevator ships primarily corn, soybeans, and food- grade corn. “Our shipments over the past four years have been 90% via rail, and 10% truck,” he says. Ninety-five percent of the rail shipments are 110-car shuttle trains and the rest are single-car shipments.

The shuttle trains, which Bechard says the Monroe location ships approximately 20 per year, are sent to the Pacific Northwest, California, Mexico, the Gulf, domestic processing, or the Texas Panhandle. The single-car trains primarily go to domestic food-grade white corn users.

“Our Monroe facility,” says Bechard, “sits in the heart of our trade territory and provides critical access to Group 3 UP rail markets. The facility’s combined speed and space, plus handling flexibility allows us to better serve our owners and respond quickly to changing market conditions.”

There has been an elevator in Monroe for close to 100 years, but its biggest growth was in the 1970s when a 210,000-bushel concrete workhouse was built followed a few years later by an 18-tank, 1.8-million bushel concrete annex.

The original concrete workhouse is now used primarily to handle overflow grain and as a drying complex for wet grain.

SUPPLIER LIST

AERATION SYSTEM/FANS: AGI
BEARING SENSORS: AGI
BIN SWEEPS: Prairie Land Millwright
BUCKET ELEVATORS:Schlagel Inc.
BULK WEIGH SCALE: C&A Scale Service
BULK WEIGH SCALE SYSTEM:Greenstone Systems
CATWALK:LeMar Industries
CLEANER:Warrior Mfg., LLC
CONCRETE TANK BUILDER: McPherson Concrete Storage Systems
CONTRACTOR: EBM Construction Inc.
CONTROL SYSTEMS: Jakes Electric
CONVEYORS:AGI
DISTRIBUTOR: Schlagel Inc.
DUST COLLECTION SYSTEM: AGI
DUST FILTERS:AGI
ELEVATOR BUCKETS:Maxi-Lift, Inc.
FALL PROTECTION SYSTEMS: Diversified Fall Protection
GRAIN TEMPERATURE SYSTEM:Tri-States Grain Conditioning
LEG BELTING:Continental/Applied Power Products
LEVEL INDICATORS:BinMaster
MILLWRIGHT: EBM Construction Inc.
MOTION SENSORS: AGI
SPEED REDUCERS: Dodge Industrial
SPOUTING:EBM Construction Inc.
TOWER SUPPORT SYSTEM:LeMar Industries

From the Nov/Dec 2024 Issue of Grain Journal