Renewing Our Infrastructure

By Nichole Gouldie, Communications Specialist

Recognizing the need for new locations and making upgrades to current facilities allows MKC to keep pace with the growing needs of the producer. As MKC has continued to focus on renewing infrastructure this past year, the cooperative has invested more than $16 million dollars across its trade territory.

Jon Brown, director of facility management for MKC, has overseen each of the projects. “Meeting our customers’ needs and improving the customer experience has been the driver behind these projects,” Brown says. 

MKC made improvements in Talmage to the existing elevator in the fall of 2013 and added a new McPherson Concrete jump-form storage tank. The most recent project completed at Talmage was a new office and second scale and grain probe.

In November of 2013, MKC broke ground on the new 2.2 million bushel grain facility in Rice County. Located five miles south of Lyons, this project consists of 1.2 million bushels of upright storage and a 1 million bushel ground storage system. The Rice County facility was open for the 2014 wheat harvest.

Ground was broken on a new steel bin facility in Butler County in December 2013. Located near Benton, this project consists of three bins each with a capacity of 307,000 bushels. The new office and dual scale layout on the property allows plenty of staging for trucks. Benton was also open for the 2014 wheat harvest.

In the spring of 2013, a second scale was added at Moundridge and Walton, improving traffic flow and reducing wait time during peak harvest times.

Groveland received a conveyor upgrade in the winter of 2013. This upgrade allows the facility to move grain anywhere through the facility at the same speed as the fastest leg. Ground was also broken on the 1.2 million bushel LeMar ground storage system. The LeMar storage system was first used to store milo in the fall of 2013.

In the summer of 2013, Marquette added a third ground bunker. With two bunkers already in place, the three bunkers are filled with a high speed 15,000 bushel per hour drive over conveyor. This is the third ground bunker pad constructed in Marquette in the past two and a half years.

In August 2013, MKC broke ground on the Canton Rail Terminal, a state of the art high speed rail loader. The main elevator holds 1.2 million bushels of upright storage in a concrete slip form structure that was poured from ground level to a height of 131’ in less than seven days. The Canton site has 2 – 1.2 million bushel ground bunkers. An overpass was constructed to allow trucks to still enter while a train is on-site. The new office features dual scales with two lanes of inbound traffic. RFID card readers will be issued to customers making the experience as quick and simple as possible. Three covered dump pits will allow grain to be transferred in any kind of weather. Although the elevator is still under construction, the facility is open for fall harvest and using the ground bunkers for storage. 

Ground was broken on a 425,000 bushel steel bin in Manhattan in May. The facility will also receive upgrades including speakers and an outbound printer scale by fall harvest.

In Alta Vista, construction began on a 490,000 bushel bunker in August.
Since February 2013, the addition of 9.8 million bushels of storage has brought MKC’s total storage capacity to nearly 39 million bushels.

“Continued investments in our facilities allow us to keep pace with the growing needs of our customers,” said Brown. “By building state-of-the-art facilities, MKC can provide not only speed and space, but safety for our customers, employees and the environment.”