The company announced today that it will break ground this month on the project and is aiming toward spring 2024 completion.
Scoular's existing facility in Jerome, Idaho provides custom feed blends for dairy and beef customers. The expansion adds two key capabilities:
- A steamflaking process, which processes corn into flakes and makes the feed more digestible for cattle. "The corn is steamed, heated, then pressed into a flake."
- A pellet mill to make feed pellets.
"Pellets are easy to transfer, handle and proportion for optimal nutrition. Feed pellets typically are used for feeding calves and beef cattle," said the manufacturer.
Scoular, based in Nebraska, is a $9.7bn global agribusiness. It recently built a facility in Jerome that manufactures a barley protein concentrate for pet food and aqua feed. Last year, the company launched a program in Idaho, called Barley MVP, to expand barley as a sustainable rotation crop.
Kansas retrofit
In March this year, the company announced it was retrofitting a Kansas facility to crush both soybeans and canola. It will recommission the former sunflower crush plant outside of Goodland, northwest Kansas that it purchased in 2021.
The firm will make an investment to convert the facility to crush both soybeans and canola. Up to 40 new jobs will be created, and the plant is expected to begin operations towards the latter end of 2024.
The facility will process 11 million bushels of oilseeds a year, toggling between canola and soybeans as availability dictates. As low-carbon crops such as camelina develop in the future, Scoular said it will also be able to process those new seeds.
A spokesperson told us the facility would produce over 200,000 tons of meal, derived from both soybeans and canola, on an annual basis.
