NEW hopes to build new grain elevator
By ANDREW MCGINN
When Landus Cooperative shuttered its Scranton grain elevator in the spring of 2019, citing a risk of falling concrete, it created a need for area farmers.
NEW Cooperative is exploring a way to seize on that opportunity.
Company spokesmen told the Greene County board of supervisors on Feb. 13 that Fort Dodge-based NEW is in the planning stage for an elevator and a feed mill at its growing agronomy site southwest of Cooper.
“We hope to put a significant improvement there,” grain manager Mark Walter told the board. “It would produce a significant tax base to Greene County.”
It would also bring 16 or 17 new jobs to the county, Walter said, tripling the number of employees at the Franklin Twp. site.
Supervisors welcomed the news with open arms — and possibly property tax relief, which Walter and NEW operations manager Frank Huseman asked about, but didn’t ask for outright.
“I think the whole thing’s exciting,” Supervisor Tom Contner said.
Supervisor Dawn Rudolph, of Scranton, noted afterward that a NEW elevator would be put to good use in the wake of the elevator closure in her community.
The elevator could comprise a couple of concrete silos and a couple of steel bins, with the potential for 4.4 million bushels of storage.
The site’s feed mill would produce between 600,000 and 700,000 tons of swine feed annually.
“I think both of them are well-needed in that area,” Contner said.
In showing the supervisors potential designs, Walter and Huseman stressed that nothing is final.
“The plant can and will change,” Walter said. “This was some place to start from.”
Above all, though, the plan will require regulatory approval from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and Walter and Huseman asked the supervisors for help in speeding the process.
Walter called getting the necessary air permit “a major hurdle.”
Dust from a feed mill, in particular, generates particulate matter, they said. NEW “would not even attempt to break ground” without first getting the permit, according to Walter.
NEW will also have to discuss entrances and exits with the Iowa Department of Transportation. The site is along Highway 4.
NEW Cooperative got the OK from nearly the same group of county supervisors in 2014 to establish a site for agronomy services near Cooper after the purchase there of 12 acres. The cooperative bought an additional 22 acres to the north last year, Walter said, which it would need to have rezoned to industrial for a grain elevator and feed mill.
“Customers have really accepted us,” Huseman explained. “We started from zero there.”
He noted that the Cooper site has become the company’s largest market for anhydrous ammonia.
With 4,800 members, NEW Cooperative has a presence in 39 communities.
“We’re a company that’s very financially sound,” Walter said. “We very much want to be part of the communities we’re involved in.”
NEW Cooperative on Feb. 12 committed a $350,000 gift to a new feed mill and grain science complex at Iowa State University.
The $21.2 million facility will be built on 10 acres of land southwest of U.S. Highway 30 and State Avenue in Ames, and will be used to produce grain for ISU’s teaching and research farms. Ground was broken in September.
Iowa State also recently created a feed technology minor.
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