World Grain - November 2013 - 68

FEATURE: Conagra mills faCility gets makeover

Interstates Companies, Sioux Center,
Iowa, U.S. which was responsible for
the control system and electrical overall. Interstates worked with Nelson
Rathert, manager of plant engineering
at ConAgra Mills, in connection with
automation and electrical. Ebmeier
Engineering LLC, Glenwood, Iowa,
was responsible for the considerable
structural work done at Oakland.
Throughout the expansion project,
which began in 2009, the flour mill was
kept running.
"The longest downtime in the project
was 18 hours," Allen said. "That's really tough to accomplish. I don't have
enough credit to communicate about
those who were able to complete a project of this size, scale and scope. To be
able to do these on the run makes things
much easier for our customers."
Jesse N. Higgins, superintendent at
Oakland, added, "We were able to get

through the project without any customer complaints."
A central player in the execution
of the "on the run" approach, Allen
said, was SCA Construction, Inc.,
Independence, Kansas, U.S., responsible for equipment installation.
"You have to have someone who is a
partner when you sequence these on the
run," Allen said.
The project was the fourth of what
Allen described as a "complete refurbishment" of a flour mill by ConAgra Mills
in recent years, following major work
done by the company in Saginaw, Texas;
Commerce City, Colorado; and in Puerto
Rico. Also in recent years was a significant project in Alton, Illinois, in which
ConAgra updated the roll floors and made
a number of structural enhancements.
As is the case with a number of U.S.
flour mills, the site at Oakland originally was a grain elevator (dating to the

1920s) and only later was a flour mill
added or, in this case, repurposed.
Built as a Farmers Coop elevator, a
three-story feed mill was installed in
1946. The facility was converted in 1965
by Montana Flour Mills, which added
another two floors as part of installing
the A Mill. The mill was acquired by
ConAgra Mills in 1967. The B mill was
installed in the mid-1980s.
milling strong in California
Even beyond the Oakland mill, milling industry investment in California
is nothing new. Over the last 25 years,
there has been more mill construction in
California than in any other state. New
mills have been built in Colton, Fresno,
San Bernardino and Stockton. As a result,
California has the largest flour milling capacity in the United States with 123,800
cwts of daily milling capacity, according
to the Grain & Milling Annual, published
by Sosland Publishing Co. Kansas ranks
second at 112,400 cwts.
R. Michael Veal, vice-president of
marketing at ConAgra Mills, said the reason for this investment is hardly a mystery. "The California economy is huge,"
he said. "If California were a country, it
would have the ninth largest economy in
the world. It's larger than Russia."
Comparing California with the rest
of the United States is similarly impressive. Its population of 38 million is
equal that of the 22 least populous U.S.
states combined.
Not only is California large, it is getting larger, Veal said.
"It is growing post-recession, leading the U.S. recovery," he said.
"Unemployment is declining. Incomes
are increasing. There are more people,
more dollars, more disposable income.
The population of the state is growing at
a rate of 350,000 per year."
As part of the project, structural additions were made at Oakland both to
handle the heavier equipment installed
in the mill and for earthquake protection, Higgins said.
The mill has endured a number of
earthquakes over the years, including a

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