During a virtual event for producers, customers and media, Cargill, the global food, agricultural, financial and industrial products company, announced today the opening of its new premix animal nutrition facility in Lewisburg, Ohio. The 220,000 square-foot, future-ready facility is deploying advanced technology not previously used in animal agriculture or pet food production that allows the use of less resources to produce feed, while ensuring the highest quality and traceability of its products for Cargill customers.
The Lewisburg West facility broke ground on November 8, 2018 and represents a $50 million investment in expanding Cargill’s existing feed production operations. The facility produces non-medicated feed and supports Cargill and Provimi branded animal nutrition premixes and products, along with additives and specialty and custom blends.
“It started with thinking differently about how to best meet the changing needs of our customers, along with a commitment to invest and innovate for the future,” said Adriano Marcon, president of Cargill’s animal nutrition business. “Now, we believe the new facility sets a new standard for premix production giving our customers unmatched confidence in our animal nutrition offerings.”
The Lewisburg West facility includes a 160-ft steel premix tower, along with a new benchmark of automation and controls that provide precise measurements and traceability that exceed industry standards and significantly reduce cross contamination risks. Soft, flexible hoppers for micro-ingredient dosing provide gram-level precision in production, and stainless-steel design makes cleaning the systems easier and more effective.
The highly automated production process with continuous human monitoring ensures accuracy and reduces the risk of injuries to employees. Among several new features, the facility’s humidity and temperature controls, strict management of ingredients and plant access will further protect food safety as well as customers’ brands.
“The plant was designed with feed and food safety as a top priority,” said Marcon. “We wanted to provide our customers peace of mind, by increasing the transparency around the food their farm animals and pets are eating.”
Each of the plants’ four segregated production lines can run a mix from start to finish in approximately one hour, providing increased capacity across Cargill’s network of feed facilities. As a non-medicated facility, it allows for more support to livestock and poultry operations raising animals without the use of antibiotics and opens new opportunities for the company within the pet food market. It’s estimated that Lewisburg West will produce 154,000 tons of non-medicated animal nutrition products and premix across its production lines each year.
“This project is the culmination of several years of thoughtful work, reimagining our facilities from the ground up. I’m really proud of our team. The expanded capacity the plant gives us means we can help more customers have confidence in the safety and quality of the premix they use for their animals,” said Marcon.
95 percent of the Lewisburg West production is automated, leaving only 5 percent of the product weight to be handled by hand.
Dan Sullivan, media@cargill.com
