Today, we went to the Cargill Wet Corn Milling Plant in Eddyville, Iowa. Cargill is the single largest purchaser of corn in the world and consists of seventy- five business units. It is still a privately held company and was founded in Conover, Iowa in 1865. They employ 161,000 people in sixty-six countries around the world. Cargill purchased the Eddyville location because of a surplus power generation station on site; it still supplies steam and 12 megawatts of electricity to the facilities. This location is also has good access to raw materials (corn), new products, and access to railways and trucks. In total the plant covers two thousand acres and employs 500 people. Furthermore, the plant consumes 250,000 bushels of corn per day.
We first toured the grading facility where each load of corn that is brought in is tested for mycotoxins, test weight, broken kernels. Each load of corn is probed four times to be tested. The probe is a hydraulic arm with a vacuum tube inside of it. Loads get rejected if the corn is over ten parts per million of mycotoxins. In one day, 375 truckloads of corn be processed through the plant.
We moved on to the other part of the plant but first we had to change into long pants, fill out a questionnaire and put on PPE. Then we toured the first part of the mill, which was fifty degrees celcius! This is where the corn gets separated into its components; it then moves on to the refining part of the plant. This part of the plant breaks the corn down to food products, such as; sweeteners, dextrose, corn syrup, sweet bran, crude corn oil, and citric products. To make these food products the plant uses seven million gallons of water per day. They make the equivalent of one hundred and sixty thousand one pound tubs of margarine per day. They also process corn into ethanol that is only sold for fuel; they produce thirty-five million gallons of ethanol per year. After touring the massive plant we were all in awe.
In conclusion, powering the entire facility takes seventy-five megawatts of electricity per day. Cargill as a company focuses on engaging employees, satisfying consumers, enriching communities and profitable growth. They’re business motto is “valuing people, creating results”.
Reuben Vanderploeg
