Early in 2019, Siemer Milling Co. completed a seven-story flour loadout tower for shipping by truck and rail at its Teutopolis, IL headquarters flour mill (217-857-3131). Flour represents 80% of what the company sells from Teutopolis.
In 2021, Siemer Milling turned to its other 20% of production, the coproducts that result from the wheat milling process – midds, bran, red dog, etc. The roughly $4 million, 105-foot-tall coproducts tower went into service in January 2022 and holds approximately 750 tons of product.
“We call the other 20% ‘coproducts,’ because we appreciate the utility of those components that are not flour but still have good nutritional profiles. A capable miller maximizes the value of the entire kernel. We don’t throw anything away, and we don’t give anything away,” comments President Rick Siemer with a smile on the company’s coproducts business.
Prior to construction of the new tower, coproducts were stored in several locations around the Teutopolis campus. Consolidating them in one tower offers a number of advantages, says David Jansen, vice president-production:
• Maintaining quality becomes easier. For example, warm bran from the mill could attract condensation in the outdoor bins where it had been stored. That could be dealt with through aspiration, but it required constant attention. The new tower is insulated to reduce condensation.
• With the new tower, coproducts only need to be handled once prior to storage.
• The tower provides enough storage that the mill can run all weekend without having to schedule millfeed trucks before Monday.
The Project
To construct this specialty design/build slipform project, Siemer Milling reached out to Empire AG, Ankeny, IA (515-344-9680). Siemer notes that this was one of Empire AG’s first large projects in the flour milling industry. “They did a great job,” Jansen says.
Empire Ag built a square slipform concrete tower 105 feet tall on a 32-foot-x-26-foot footprint. The slip includes seven square bins holding an average total of 350 tons of various coproducts. The bins are equipped with Bindicator level switches.
Adjacent to the square tower is a 400-ton slipform concrete tank standing 105 feet tall and 26 feet in diameter. This tank has a BinMaster Bin Bob level indicator and is equipped with a Laidig Systems cone-bottom unloading system. Trucks can drive directly underneath the slipform tank for loading.
Additional equipment used in the tower include:
• Screw augers from Anderson-Crane Co.
• Vortex diverter valves.
• Blower Engineering Tri-Lobe Blowers.
• Schenck Process dust filters.
• Tracworks truck loading automation system from Tracs Engineering, a local Teutopolis firm.
The structure includes one long truck loading bay at ground level. Trucks can be loaded on either of two 11-foot-x-70-foot Fairbanks pitless scales installed by Southern Illinois Scale & Construction during loading. Plant Manager Kenneth Stice says it takes eight to 10 minutes to load a semi.
Ed Zdrojewski, senior editor
