The new facility will accommodate the production and packaging of its entire line of Diamond V's products for animals.
Diamond V is an animal health and feed additive business that Cargill acquired in 2018; it is focused on the full range of production species including dairy, beef, swine, poultry along with aquaculture and manufactures a range of immunity supporting products along with products to address animal performance and food safety.
Site work on the south plant expansion started in the spring of 2018, said Mike Goble, Cargill’s global managing director for Diamond V. The facility goes live next month.
The expansion will support global sales as the company has been seeing growth in all markets including in US and beyond in China, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia & Myanmar, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Germany, Poland and Russia, he said.
The expansion is the result of a US$29.1m investment and adds 100,000 square foot to the company’s southern facility, according to Cargill. The company will close its northern facility and transfer all 20 employees to the new expanded location.
“We chose to move production from the north facility to the south plant for a number of reasons,” said Goble. “The north plant currently sits on a flood plain in a mostly residential area of Cedar Rapids [and] our south plant and headquarters are located in an industrial zone south of the city, so production is better suited to this area.”
“In addition, our north plant is more than 75 years old and in need of several upgrades,” he said. “The south plant was built with state-of-the-art production and environmental controls that will substantially reduce air emissions.”
The new facility is also set to have streamlined production compared to the older site, he said. “For instance, the production process flow is straight-line with fewer feet of raw material and finished product transfer lines,” he added.
“We’ve also engineered safety into the process wherever possible,” he said. “We incorporated mezzanines, handrails, and ladders on new equipment to minimize the use of lifts and other fall-protection devices. In addition, the latest explosion-suppression systems were utilized on product transfer lines for safety.”
The expansion is intended to match the production from the north plant and add an additional 6 to 7% to the south plant’s current production capacity, Goble said. The facility has space to “nearly double” total production abilities in the future and add eight production lines.
“The building was constructed with future growth in mind,” he said. “Required infrastructure was incorporated in the design to expedite build-out of the entire facility as the need arises.”
