News

One Year Anniversary of our 30,000 mt Portage Mill

Our 14 month journey to construct our fourth oat mill began in January 2006 with the release of our tender package. The first pound of product was produced at the end of February 2007 and over the next few months there was no shortage of improvement opportunities. When you realize it takes over 150 separate pieces of equipment, 94 motors and extensive PLC programming to efficiently produce high quality human consumption oat products, it is not surprising that there will be challenges. Our experienced team was able to quickly make adjustments and in some cases simply had to replace equipment and change the flow to achieve operational efficiencies and meet customer expectations.

Today, the mill is operating at peak efficiency providing us with an additional 30,000 mt or 66 million pounds of annual capacity. This capacity has enabled us to grow with our core customer base and expand into new markets. With a dedication to continuous improvement, our operations department is actively looking at adopting some of the new technology into our other mills to gain efficiencies. It is a classic example of investing in technology to becoming better at what you do.