West Central staff, directors and contractors celebrated the completion of a new storage bin Tuesday in Beaver.

West Central unveils more grain storage ahead of big harvest

Special to The Jefferson Herald
BEAVER — West Central’s Beaver location celebrated completion Tuesday of a major grain renovation project as area growers anticipate soybean harvest as early as this week.

Location staff showed off the 710,000-bushel bin — representing an additional 500,000 bushels of dry corn storage capacity — in addition to a faster conveying system and office updates.

Nearly 100 farmers, stockholders, staff and construction partners gathered for lunch Tuesday in Beaver.

“Showing off an investment is celebration-worthy, but today is really about our customers,” explained West Central’s Executive Vice President of Grain, Roger Fray. “This asset is faster, is bigger and is ready to go for harvest.”

Beaver has also updated its traffic pattern to allow a smoother unloading process for semi-trucks.

Two people man the office full-time year-round with an additional 10 to 12 serving customers during harvest.

Sharon Kautzky, who has been working with farmers in the Beaver area for nearly 35 years, was excited to show off the upgrades to growers who are preparing to cross the scales this fall. “It’s great that we can get them in and out more efficiently. Every minute counts at harvest.”

Partners in demolishing three old structures and putting up the new bin, leg and conveyors were Larson Contracting; Moeller Engineering; Brock Grain Systems; Andy Murphy Construction; Enterprise Electric; TempuTec; ABC Crane; Gordon Cassen of Schlotfeldt Engineering; and Hamilton Ready-Mix.

Fray noted the additional storage capacity is timely in advance of what’s predicted to be a record harvest.

West Central is also completing upgrades at its Dawson location.

Chris Nation, regional manager for the cooperative, said electricians are on-site finalizing work on the new 15,000 bushel-per-hour receiving pit and leg, as well as a new scale.

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