Soybean processing facility focuses on quality

STONINGTON, Ill. — “Quality” was mentioned countless times during a recent 90-minute tour of the Bayer Commercial Soybean Processing Facility.

“We’re very proud of what we do here across the board, how we serve our customers, the quality of product, the premium product that we produce for our customers,” said Drew Yingling, site lead.

The facility’s crew conducts nine to 10 quality checks through the whole process.

“We do our quality checks within the field. Our field inspection process is a huge part of the quality check process. We do that three different times throughout the course of the growing season,” Yingling said.

“We get a sample from a cross-section of the bin for a thorough representation of the stored soybeans. We do another quality check when it comes in from the grower’s bin. We’ll take a quality check at receiving. We’ll take several quality checks throughout the conditioning process, and we’ll do a quality check when we run it through our packaging equipment.

“That final sample goes to the quality lab to make absolutely, positively sure that what you’re seeing the bag label is the absolute gospel.”

Quality Lab

A media tour fittingly began in the quality lab where the seed soybeans’ journey at the facility begins and ends before shipment to farmers for the next season. Physical and germ analysis are conducted in the quality lab.

“Bulk samples are brought to the lab and that’s how we get an estimation of what our product supply is out in the country. From October through November, we’ll process over 500 bulk samples,” said Hunter Girten, production associate.

“In tandem with that, we also have our packaging where they run the finished samples. Those are all samples of what we have packaged so far. That is to verify the quality of everything in the bag.

“For the bulk process, it will go through the shaker machine. They’ll do a physical analysis and they’ll do a germ analysis, and then we have other samples we send to other labs to get tested, as well.

“The shaker machine in the quality lab is a mini representation of what is done in the conditioning tower. This shakes and gets all of the stuff we don’t want out of the soybeans. So, it gives us a good representation of how many good quality seeds we have.”

During the germination testing process, seeds are planted in a tray and labeled with a batch number of identification. A consistent amount of water is applied to each sample tray for consistency and are placed in a temperature-controlled room during the growth process.

After seven days of plant growth, each plant is analyzed for its development to ensure that it meets a quality criteria.

“It’s a very manual process. Each batch of seed we have here, each bin we have in the countryside we check quality to make sure that what we’re delivering to the customer is exactly what we have on the bag tag,” Girten said.

Receiving

About 2,400 trucks delivering an estimated 138 million pounds of soybeans go through the receiving pit annually.

“We are highly quality-focused here. Every truck that comes in, we know where it’s coming from, what it has on it, who’s driving it, what bin it’s going to go into here, and we are testing every single truck to get the seed count,” said Myles Repscher, seed technician.

“The lab has already done a good job on the bin probe in getting the data into our system and then we are validating and making sure that all of that information is correct when they bring it in in the truck.

“So, we already have that initial data from the bin probe and when we are selecting that batch to come in we’re validating that information again. We are validating every truck load to make sure the information is correct.”

Color Sorter

Seed moves from the receiving area to the cleaner and on to the color sorter to eliminate any rejects. The cleaner will clean out any debris and size the soybeans.

“We run between 650 and 750 pounds of soybeans per minute,” said John Nation, seed technician.

A high-speed camera looks at 36,000 individual seeds per second to identify any seed that doesn’t meet the color criteria.

Bagging

Mini-bulk bags hold about 40 units, or 40 acres, of soybean seed.

“If we have all the lines running, we can get 3,200 acres of seed out in one hour,” said Adam LeVault, seed technician.

“There’s a lot more here than just putting seed into bags. We have to pay attention to a lot of details and keeping 18 people on the same page. We kind of mastered that down to an art now. We do some pretty rigorous training. We revisit our policies and procedures annually and if anything changes in those procedures we have training on that.”

Following packaging, quality tests are conducted once again for physical appearance, moisture, purity, germination, herbicide tolerance, weed seed, inter material, mechanical damage and other factors.

Each bag contains extensive detail about its contents ranging from variety and where it as bagged to seed count.

Shipping

“We are the last stop for quality in the plant. It’s been through all the other departments. Now it’s ready to go out the door and that’s on us,” said Sam Weller, seed technician.

“We sent out over 3,000 loads last year, 3,000 trucks, and we had one miss-ship, so I’m pretty proud of my team. They do a good job catching things.”

Of the 2.3 million-plus units shipped out each year, 775,000 of that was bulk last year and that number is growing every year.

Looking Back

The seed production facility’s success relies on its farmers across 20 counties in Illinois, and this past growing season provided plenty of seed.

“Our growing area was really set up for success with the weather that we had as far as getting the crop in the ground in a timely manner. Harvest was a nice smooth transition for us this year with the weather we were given,” Yingling noted.

“Those are two pretty critical pieces for us to have good, solid weather for the crops going in a the right time to enable those yields and get solid quality that we’re able to run through our facility.”

“It was an early spring. We were 80% planted by May 1, which is a huge number for central Illinois, and it set us up for harvest, too. We’re 99% harvested. I think we’ve got one or two growers left,” said Ed Rohrer, production manager.

“Having that stuff in the bin by this date (on Oct. 25) and at that point we can actually control what’s happening. Mother Nature has no control over much anymore once it’s in the bin.

“We play that game every year with Mother Nature. We’ve got to be a reliable seed supplier every single year. Our customers count on that and we’re sitting in the heart of Illinois where we need to supply that product.”

By The Numbers

• The Stonington facility grows approximately 56,000 acres of soybean seed across 20 Illinois counties.

• The growing footprint currently consists of 550 fields across 72 different seed growers and 27 separate soybean varieties.

• Approximately 2.3 million units, or bags, of soybean seed is packaged annually, of which about 75% is Asgrow brand soybeans which are distributed to about 20 states.

• The team consists of 41 full-time employees and up to 20 seasonal employees during the peak season.

• A crop plan is released around February based on demand signals and contracts seed growers at that time who will plant and grow the seed.