RURAL AND IN-TOWN PROJECTS

Over the course of 2013 and 2014, Hemingford, NE-based Farmers Cooperative Elevator Co. completed two
major projects, one at its main in-town location and a new branch elevator 30 miles to the northeast in Mirage Flats. The latter is a 620,000-bushel all steel elevator serving primarily spring and winter wheat producers who previously had to drive up to 30 miles to deliver their crop. 

The former was the addition of 1 million bushels of concrete storage at the headquarters elevator in Hemingford. According to Grain Division Manager Bart Moseman, who has been with the cooperative since 2006, Mirage Flats is a wide spot in the road about 30 miles northeast of Hemingford. The site, however, is in the middle of a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation irrigation district watered from nearby Box Butte Reservoir. Grain producers there had to haul grain either to Hemingford or to a smaller Farmers Cooperative Elevator branch 12 miles to the north at Hay Springs, NE. 

At Hemingford, Moseman says, “we were storing a lot of corn and wheat on the ground. We were dumping wheat onto trains to get the facility ready for corn harvest. Now we have better merchandising and blending opportunities.” Cost of the two projects ran about $9 million. The cooperative awarded the contract for both projects to EBM Construction Inc., Norfolk, NE (402- 371-2945), which had been doing millwright work for the company since 1994. Mirage Flats, in fact, was EBM’s first greenfield project for the coop. Moseman says he has been pleased with the builder’s performance.

Read the full Grain Journal article here >