Bunge North America is planning to break ground on a new 30,000 st dry fertilizer warehouse in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the first week of August. The warehouse is expected to be operational in the middle of the second quarter of 2011, according to Bunge Vice President and General Manager Olavo Dietzsch, who told Green Markets that Bunge plans to market the major NPK dry fertilizers from the location, which is adjacent to an existing Bunge soybean crushing plant.
“Our new fertilizer warehouse will complement our product offering in the region and be in total synergy with our agribusiness operations and grain origination,” said Dietzsch. “We will have only wholesale business out of the fertilizer shed that will be adjacent to the crush plant.”
The new facility, which will be on the BNSF rail line, will receive fertilizer by rail and ship by truck. The crush plant receives product by truck and ships by rail. Bunge will utilize synergies between the two facilities by using a 110 railcar loop. The team operating the warehouse will also be shared with the crush plant. The crush plant, which was built in 1999 and expanded in 2008, has a capacity of 225,000 bushels per day. It is located south of Council Bluffs, Iowa, near highway I-29.
This will be Bunge North America’s first major fertilizer warehouse in the U.S., and it has others on the drawing board. To date, it has leased a smaller warehouse in Fulton, Ill., from Agri Industries for NPK sales.
Green Markets reported earlier this year that Council Bluffs was getting primary consideration for the Bunge warehouse (GM, April 26, p. 8).
Bunge North America operates in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as an operating arm of Bunge Ltd. Headquarters are located in St. Louis, Mo., with administrative offices in Oakville, Ont., Canada; Washington, D.C.; and Mexico City, Mexico. As a leading North American agribusiness and food processing company, Bunge operates grain elevators, grain and oilseed processing plants, refineries for edible oil, and packaging facilities.