Harvest States to Build $60-Mil Facility

FAIRMONT, MN-Harvest States, the grains and foods division of CHS Cooperatives, has hired Todd & Sargent as design/build, general contractor for its soybeancrushing facility project. Groundbreaking for the new facility, located on a 26-acre site at County Highway 26 and County Highway 29 here, is scheduled for April 2002; completion is expected by the harvest of 2003.

The site is part of a larger tract of land owned by CHS Cooperatives.

Although company officials did not have precise dimensions for the new facility, they say it would handle 110,000 bushels of soybeans per day and would be staffed by 38 full-time employees. The project is believed to be in excess of $60 million, says LisaGraham-Peterson, a spokeswoman for Harvest States. The project also has received all the necessary permits and has notified the city of Fairmont and the state of Minnesota that it will proceed. Todd & Sargent, headquartered out of Ames, IA, has a long-standing business relationship with the farmer-owned agricultural cooperative, having servedas general contractor for Harvest States flour mills in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Additional primary subcontractors under Todd & Sargent include Interstates Electric & Engineering of Sioux Center, IA, and M&W Contractors of East Peoria, IL. Crown Iron Works of Roseville, MN, and Roskamp Champion of Waterloo, IA, have been selected as major suppliers of processing equipment for the new Harvest States soybean crushing plant.

Harvest States is part of CHS Cooperatives, a producer-to-consumer cooperative system owned by farmers, ranchers and their local co-ops from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest and from the Canadian border to Texas. The agricultural foods cooperative provides a wide variety of products and services ranging from grain marketing to foodprocessing to meet the needs of customers around the world.