New Stueve Facilities Offer Ag Retailers Speed, Accuracy

Leading the industry in planning and constructing dry fertilizer storage and chemical warehouse solutions, Stueve Construction helped three ag retailers — Heritage Cooperative, Osage Co-op Elevator, and Southeast Farmers Coop — continue to better serve their growers with speed and accuracy.

Heritage Cooperative, Marysville, OH

What They Needed

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“Building our brand, streamlining our agronomy operations, staying on the leading ‘edge of technology’, ‘precision ag’ and providing ‘great service’ were all key areas that we wanted to be focused and vigilant on,” said Eric Parthemore (President/CEO) and Terry House (VP of Agronomy). “Our market reach of 22 counties can create some dynamics that we needed to find ways of not only meeting expectations but exceeding them,” said House.

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“In our process we met with various industry dry fertilizer facility builders and toured a lot of facilities. We chose Stueve Construction for the various building features that we liked, their industry experience, plus they built our major hub facility at Kenton a few years back. So we knew what we would get with our builder. We really liked the ‘weekly project conference’ calls conducted by Stueve, that included Sackett, Kahler, Electrician, Millwrights, etc. that kept us fully engaged and in the loop,” said Dave McIntosh – Marysville Ag Campus Manager.

Osage Co-op Elevator, Osage, IA

What They Needed

“Our goal was to plan and build a facility that would serve our farmers much faster with precision today as well as for the future. We didn’t want to cut corners and needed to build a facility that offers speed, accuracy and precision,” said Gayle Melcher, General Manager at Osage Co-op Elevator. “We centralized our whole agronomy complex north of our existing plant and this gave us room to expand in the future and improve our traffic flows. Our old facility had more than served its purpose and we needed to make a move or be at risk of losing valuable market share to others,” said Dave Chambers, Ag Dept. Manager.

“We looked at several builders but chose Stueve Construction to build ours. We really counted on them and they brought experience, in-house engineering, and a wealth of knowledge to help bring our project from a dream to reality. Stueve Construction did an excellent job organizing and being the team leader of our project. Stueve, Waconia, Kahler, and RC Peterson have done a lot of projects together and they take care of all of the little things that we didn’t have to worry about,” said Gayle Melcher. “Key features we really liked are our Elevated Control Room with Bumpout Area, Access to the Blend Tower Platform by stairs, Enclosed Truck Receiving, and the Bin/Catwalk/Alleyway Natural Light Factor.”

“We looked at several plants and couldn’t find any that matched Stueve’s ability to bring in natural light to those areas. That sold us!” said Dave Chambers.

Southeast Farmers Coop, Spink, SD

What They Needed

Combining forces on May 1, 2013, Southeast Farmers Elevator Co. (Elk Point) and FCE (Beresford) merged to form a premier Cooperative serving Southeast South Dakota and Western Iowa. “We put together a company vision that would centralize our agronomy operations with a ‘state-of-the-art’ facility that would better serve the needs of our farmers with ‘speed and accuracy,” said Don Truhe, General Manager. “Our Complex is located on 25 acres at the Spink Exit on I-29 between Elk Point, SD, and Beresford, SD.”

“To begin our process, we contacted Steve Anderson at Stueve Construction to meet with us, listen to our needs and develop some solutions that will keep us on the leading edge of serving our market,” said Chad Nelson, Agronomy Division Manager. “We toured several dry fertilizer storage facilities around the area, relied on Stueve with their experience in building hub facilities to help us develop our agronomy hub.”

“It was imperative that we provide our farmers with ‘great service and extraordinary value’ on our first year of the merger,” said Don Truhe, General Manager.

“Our Project Partners were Stueve Construction, Olsson Associates, Waconia Mfg., Kahler Automation, RC Peterson Electric/Todds Electric, and James Steel. Adverse weather conditions (record rainfall) created some challenges during our construction process. Our weekly conference calls conducted by Stueve Construction, were very helpful on keeping our project on track,” said Truhe.

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