The $150M facility will be built in Waupun
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
A construction project in Waupun, Wis., will help reduce the amount of local soybeans that leave the state for crushing.
Construction on a 66.5-acre US$150-million soybean crushing facility is scheduled to begin next year and it should be fully operational by 2020. The plant will also create about 39 jobs.
The facility will be able to handle about 100 trucks and three grain cars daily during off-peak times and an extra 150 trucks daily during harvest. In total, the plant will crush about 33 million bushels of soybeans annually, said Kathy Schlieve, city manager and director of economic development for the City of Waupun.
However, the project requires further approval before builders can break ground.
“There is a variety of things that have to happen – finalizing investors and the local permitting process – but we see the next milestone as the next major thing we have to get through,” she told FeedNavigator today.
The crushing facility is good news for Wisconsin soybean producers.
The new plant can create competition among other crushing facilities, which may enable farmers to save money, said Brad Kremer, president of the Wisconsin Soybean Association.
“Any kind of competition or opportunities to make that basis go down will be welcome by every grower in the state,” he told Farms.com today. “Right now, every single soybean produced in Wisconsin leaves the state, so this is another end user for our crops and an opportunity to keep some of those beans in the state.”