Feed Mill Project
Written by Kurt Schimek, FSE General Manager
If you’ve driven by Farm Service Elevator lately you’ve probably noticed several cranes set up over the past month and wondered “what are they doing at the feed mill?” (see picture above)
The existing feed mill was built in 1986. Prior to that feed was produced at a company owned feed mill in downtown Willmar. Both feed mills were used in the late 80’s and into the early 1990’s as the new feed mill cranked up and less feed was produced downtown. Eventually, the downtown mill was torn down and all of the feed was produced at the current site. As the downtown mill was torn down, some of the load out storage tanks were moved to our existing site and a second load out driveway was added for finished feed storage.
Fast forward to 2019 and these metal tanks have reached the end of their life and are currently being torn down and hauled “across the street” to the metal recycling center. (How convenient is that?!) Very soon we will begin the process of digging for new footings and erecting new load out bins that will be built out of concrete. Living out our company value of Stewardship, the decision for concrete was made based on the long term value for future decades of (useful) life even though replacing with metal bins would have been less costly. Our total load out capacity will be increased from 1800 ton to 2500 ton or 40% more. Like many production industries, finished storage space is a key contributor to the efficiency of the plant.
Along with efficiency, what company project wouldn’t include some cutting edge ingenuity? This new load out project will give FSE the ability to blend different feeds as they are being loaded onto the feed trucks which will increase the amount of diets we can feed to the turkeys. In addition, the load out process will be completely autonomous. We have GPS on every feed truck and we will actually start blending and scaling up the feed while the truck is still 3 miles away from arriving on site. Once the truck arrives, a RFID code on the side of each trailer will confirm the trailer is in the new bay and the load out scale will automatically start filling the feed trailer saving time for our delivery fleet which adds more efficiency. We are expecting to load a full 30 ton of feed on a trailer in less than 5 minutes.
We plan to have tours of this project once it is completed. We are hoping for an early summer completion date but obviously we have already gotten behind the original schedule due to the brutal weather in February. This is a major investment for FSE and this investment will make us a long term competitive player in the poultry feed industry. There are multiple contractors that all have a piece of the pie and to pull this all together is a major responsibility. The project manager is LSI teammate Shawn Peltier who has already managed several large scale projects for several LSI companies. We will post pictures and progress reports in future employee updates as we progress through this project.
Employee Appreciation
In celebration of Employee Appreciation Day on March 1st, Select Genetics employees were treated with donuts.
Years of Service
Congratulations to the employees highlighted below! They have all been with Select Genetics – North Carolina for the past 5 years. Thank you for your commitment to the organization!
(l-r) Emmanuel Quansah with Alex Jackson, SEL NC Farm Manager
(l-r) Emmanuel Quansah with Felipe Moreno, SEL NC Farm Manager
(l-r) Emmanuel Quansah with Joseph Kollock, SEL NC Farm Manager
(l-r) Dwin Dunkin with Patricia Ratliff, SEL NC Farm Manager
(l-r) Emmanuel Quansah and Patricia Ratliff with Teresa Watts, SEL NC Farm Worker
(l-r) Emmanuel Quansah and Patricia Ratliff with Wendy Owens, SEL NC Farm Worker
Openings
Current status of all organizational openings.
Welcome New Employees
Eric Hillesheim
Engineer
Samantha Block
Shipping Clerk
Christopher Clark
Alexander Vazquez Abreu
Foley Poult Service Technician
Joseph Lawson
Harrisonburg Back Crew
Lorenza Morales
Harrisonburg Poult Service Technician
Michelle Montes
Marylou Trejo
MN Egg Picker
Hugo Medrano
MO Catcher
Jessica Luna
Roberta Hernandez
J Gonzales Garcia
Cornelio Jimenez
Alex Melgar Melgar
MO Egg Picker
Hunter Craig
MO Farm Sanitation
Manuel Rueda Ibarra
MO Milker
Daniel Gorsline
Dominga Cortez Martinez
Osceola Poult Service Technician
Alfonso Vazquez Guerrero
VA Farm Manager Wenger's Mill
Carmen Cotto Munoz
HR Assistant
Tha Dah
Pah Htoo
Htoo Wah
Law Eh
Lineworker
Baw Htoo
Klo Lwae
Korwin Balsley
Farm Labor
Employee Count
As of 3/11/19 we have 1,723 employees
The Human Resources Team specializes in benefits and payroll, compliance and policy, employee relations, legal compliance, and company & employee overall well-being. We are located on the first floor of Life-Science Innovations on the MinnWest campus at 1800 Technology Drive. We look forward to working with you!
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