Grain Journal - January/February 2009 - (Page 30) Million-Bushel Tank OHIO COOP INSTALLS BEHLEN’S FIRST BIG BIN® SERIES TANK AS PART OF EXPANSION West Clarksfield OHIO Sunrise Cooperative Inc. Fremont, OH • 419-332-6468 Latest merger: 2007 Storage capacity: 10 million bushels at five locations Annual volume: 40 million bushels Annual revenues: $325 million Number of members: 2,150 Number of employees: 118 Crops handled: Corn, soybeans, soft red winter wheat Services: Grain handling and merchandising, feed, agronomy, energy Key personnel at West Clarksfield: • George Secor, CEO • Marcus Cordonnier, grain merchandising manager • Jeff Puder, office manager • Dave Thayer, superintendent Sunrise Cooperative’s 3.8-million-bushel rail-loading terminal at West Clarksfield, OH, with new 1-million-bushel Behlen steel tank at far right. Photos by Ed Zdrojewski. Supplier List Aeration fans Rolfes@Boone Bin sweeps Sudenga Industries Inc. Bulk weigh scale CompuWeigh Corp. Catwalk Hawthorne-Seving Contractor Elevator Services & Storage Inc. Conveyors .. Hawthorne-Seving, Hi Roller Conveyors Elevator buckets Maxi-Lift Inc. Grain temperature system Rolfes@Boone Millwright Elevator Services & Storage, Inc. Motors Weg Speed reducers Browning Steel storage Behlen Mfg. Co. Since Grain Journal last visited Sunrise Cooperative’s big rail-loading terminal at West Clarksfield, OH (440-929-1568), at the end of 2006, construction has continued almost non-stop. In 2007, the cooperative added a 723,000-bushel Behlen steel tank, a fullyautomated 50,000-bph CompuWeigh bulk weigh loadout system, a new distributor, and sped up an existing leg from 8,000 bph to 18,000 bph. Sunrise capped off the year by merging with Fremont, OH-based Country Spring Farmers Cooperative and moving its headquarters from Norwalk, OH to Fremont. More recently, the facility devoted much of 2008 to the installation of a new 1-million-bushel steel tank, the first of three in this size to be manufactured by Behlen Mfg. Co., Columbus, NE (800-553-5520). (The other two million-bushel tanks were built in Minnesota.) The big tank plus 1,200 feet of new siding track was part of a program to fulfill new contract obligations with a Tate & Lyle processing plant in Loudon, TN, says Marcus Cordonnier, grain merchandising manager for the newly-merged coop. (Prior to the merger, Cordonnier served for many years as grain manager for Country Spring.) “The plant in Tennessee receives 85-car unit trains on the Norfolk Southern (NS),” says Cordonnier, “and the new storage and track allows us to handle 85-car trains at West Clarksfield. Alternatively, our short line allows us to split the trains between West Clarksfield and our other rail-loading elevator at Monroeville.” The Sunrise elevators are located on the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad, which connects with both CSX and the NS, both of which From left: Grain Merchandising Manager Marcus reach the large feed and processing Cordonnier, West Clarksfield Office Manager Jeff Puder, and Superintendent Dave Thayer. markets in the Southeast. 30 GJ J/F
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