Facility Feature
NEW Cooperative grain complex

Livestock producers in the southern reaches of NEW Cooperative’s territory covering a wide swath of Iowa have shown “tremendous support” for the cooperative’s grain marketing and feed manufacturing efforts, says Feed Division Manager Kent Nolting.

The result of that support are a shiny new 3-million-bushel grain elevator and roughly 600,000-tpy feed mill at Cooper, IA (515-335-1014), about 8 miles south of Jefferson on State Highway 4. The cooperative had been running a small fertilizer operation on the site since 2014, so it made sense to build along the well-maintained two-lane highway.

After a standard bidding process, NEW Cooperative awarded the contract for the approximately $41.5 million project to Todd & Sargent, Ames, IA.

“Todd & Sargent’s bid was competitive, and they submitted a good design,” says Nolting, who has been in the feed business for 38 years, the last nine with NEW Cooperative. “It’s the first time we used them on a major project, but it worked out well.”

The project broke ground in October 2020. The slipform concrete and steel elevator began receiving grain with the 2021 harvest. When Grain Journal visited the site in September 2022, equipment in the feed mill was being commissioned in anticipation of a startup before the end of the month. An open house already had been held two weeks earlier.

Grain Elevator

The grain elevator includes four 400,000-bushel slipform concrete tanks plus a 1.35-million-bushel GSI corrugated steel tank. Nolting says the upright concrete tanks are perfect to use as wet tanks, when needed, and the big steel tank is designed for longer-term storage of corn. He notes that all of the corn that comes to Cooper will be used in the feed mill, and the facility will handle soybeans, as well.

The four 400,000-bushel slipform concrete tanks are 70 feet in diameter and 135 feet tall. They have flat concrete floors, sidedraw spouts, Prairie Land Bin Gator paddle sweeps, and 12-cable Rolfes@Boone grain temperature monitoring systems.

The wet tanks are equipped with four 75-hp AGI Airlanco centrifugal fans delivering 1/7 cfm per bushel of aeration, while the dry tanks receive 1/10 cfm per bushel from four 40-hp centrifugal fans. Each tank has 12 roof exhausters.

The big GSI tank is 135 feet in diameter and 84 feet tall at the sidewalls. This tank also is outfitted with a flat floor, Bin Gator paddle sweep, sidedraw spout, and 16-cable Rolfes@Boone grain temperature monitoring system. A set of six 125-hp Twin City Fan centrifugal fans provide a minimum of 1/10 cfm per bushel of aeration.

Incoming trucks are sampled with an Intersystems truck probe before proceeding to a pair of enclosed receiving pits. Trucks are weighed on 80-foot Rice Lake dump-through scales feeding into the pits, one holding 1,500 bushels and the other 800.

The pits feed a Warrior 20,000-bph leg equipped with two rows of Tapco 14x8 heavy-duty buckets mounted on a 30-inch belt. The legs deposit grain into a five-duct Hayes & Stolz distributor, which in turn, sends grain out to storage via Warrior 20,000-bph drag conveyors.

All tanks empty onto Warrior 10,000-bph above-ground drag conveyors running back to the receiving leg.

The elevator also includes a propane-fired GSI 6,000-bph tower dryer, which had not been started at the time of Grain Journal’s visit.

Feed Mill

From the elevator, corn is sent via a Warrior underground 10,000-bph drag conveyor to the feed mill, where it is ground on a CPM 400-hp hammermill or one of two CPM triple pairs 75-hp roller mills.

The feed mill itself is a slipform concrete structure 165 feet tall on a 92-foot-x-44-foot footprint. The structure includes 21 ingredient bins holding an average of 2,200 tons, a 96-ton mash bin for each of two pellet lines, and 20 finished feed bins holding a total of 2,000 tons.

All mill operations are under the control of a CPM Automation system.

Feed is mixed in a 9-ton Scott double-ribbon mixer. As of press time, the mill was just starting up, but Nolting estimates an average 3 minute 15 second run time per batch. Up to six liquids can be added at the mixer, as well as ingredients from a 20-bin CPM microingredient system.

Steam is fed to a pair of CPM 400-hp Model 7932 pellet mills from a pair of Johnston 250-hp boilers through CPM conditioners. An APEC fat coater can add fats to pellets in the mill. Finished pellets are cooled in a Bliss counterflow cooler before heading for loadout bins.

The mill has two loadout bays, each with a C & A Scales weigh lorry. NEW Cooperative operates a fleet of 72 feed trucks, distributed among the company’s nine feed mills as needed.

Ed Zdrojewski, editor

From September/October 2022 Grain Journal Issue