Press Release
In Cuming County and most of Northeast Nebraska, people know the local soybean processor here as Grain States Soya.
In other parts of the state, nation and world, the same processor is known as Soy Best.
The different names reflect the same company and the same “Old Process” soybean meal extraction method that was used when the company was founded nearly 50 years ago.
The dual name also reflects how the company has evolved from a local company to one that now sells soybean meal around the world to dairy producers.
Its other main product, soybean oil, also is sold beyond Northeast Nebraska and is used in a variety of products, including some products found on the shelves of local grocery stores.
Only a small percentage of the company’s overall sales actually take place locally, although all of the more than 3 million bushels of beans processed into meal and oil each year are purchased in Cuming County and six nearby counties.
“We have gone from a small local company to where we are now—regional, national and international,” said Mark Knobbe, general manager and chief executive officer. Randy Ortmeier serves as the company’s merchandising manager.
Some of the foreign markets are Mexico, Canada, Japan and Middle Eastern countries.
“Most people would never know that,” Knobbe said.
Nor would many Northeast Nebraskans be aware that the company has its own nutritionist on staff.
Dr. Charlie Macgregor of Camano Island, Wash., who has written a book about feed ingredients for dairy cows, helps to answer questions from dairy farmers about their cattle’s nutritional needs as part of his work for Grain States Soya.
Some residents, even in West Point, might be surprised to learn that the company’s mechanical-extracted soybean meal produces more mil than other soybean meal extraction processes.
Research at Kansas State, Minnesota, West Virginia and Nebraska has proven Soy Best’s digestibility, increased milk production and consistency.
While the company is well known to dairy farmers of all sizes, the company’s growth and its special extraction process remain almost a secret beyond its 20 employees in West Point.
Knobbe said his plant’s operations have never been kept a secret intentionally. It’s just that outside of farmers who sell soybeans and dairy farmers who use the meal, there’s not a lot of area interest because most customers are from beyond the region.
The company has invested heavily in advertising in leading national dairy magazines and has been written about in many dairy industry publications as well.
Besides truck traffic and the sweet aroma that sometimes drifts through town from the cooking of soybeans, many residents are unaware of what transpires behind the monstrous steel grain bins and more than 48,000 square feet of buildings on the northwest edge of West Point.
“However, our presence is well known locally in the soybean market,” Knobbe said. “We’re very proud of the fact that we can give a good market to all the local farmers. I would say on average, we probably have added 10 cents to a bushel of soybeans to all the local farmers in Northeast Nebraska just because we’re here.”
The privately held company started out small in 1958. The original investors were all local—Aelred, Ambrose, Matthias and Paul Hugo, Clifford and Donald Johnson, Dr. Clark Collins and Ed Baumert.
Over the years, the number of soybean processors has become fewer. Most of the other remaining processors use a solvent extraction process with a chemical called hexane.
“We use a mechanical screw-press process, which allows for a higher (protein) bypass,” Knobbe said. “The screwpress is what makes our soybean meal process different.”
After beans are purchased, they are stored in bins until they are ready to be processed. Before processing, the beans are cracked and cooked and then squeezed through presses that are similar to an auger.
Soybean oil drips from the presses while the soybean cake is pushed through the system. The cake is then cooled and ground in a hammermill.
Some water also is added back to the soybean meal before it turns into the finished product.
Knobbe was named the general manager of the plant in 1978. In 1989, Knobbe and Ambrose Hugo, one of the original investors purchased the company from the other investors and kept the original name.
In the early 1990s, Knobbe said, he and Hugo recognized that the company needed to grow or yield to bigger competitors. It’s not at all unlike what dairy producers faced.
In 1992, the company started marketing the soybean meal to dairy cattle under the trade name, “Soy Best.”
Today, Soy Best is marketed to dairy farms around the world. Soybean oil continues to be sold to food refineries and has recently been marketed to the biodiesel industry.
The company just completed an entirely new production line in a building that was adjacent to the original processing plant. The nearby plant formerly operated as Nutition Specialties.
The second plant has increased production an additional 40 percent, with the capability to add another 60 percent. Before the additional plant opened, work went on around the clock, with Christmas and Thanksgiving the only there wasn’t production.
The plant also has the capability to blend feed rations for area farmers, according to their specifications.
The rations, which often are set according to a dairy operator’s nutritionist, includes Soy Best, along with corn distillers grain, high-protein solvent meal, fish meal from the Gulf of Mexico and whole cotton seed from the South. Other ingredients include mineral supplied by the local dairy producer, along with other microingredients that are mixed and delivers in bulk.
“Most dairy farmers have sophisticated rations, such as one for when the cow is lactating, one when the cow is dry and one during the fresh-cow period,” Knobbe said.
The local plant also takes degummed soybean oil and packages it for other companies. Grain States Soya adds a flavoring agent and a preservative to another company’s specifications, then packages it in either 40-pound pails, 40-pound cartons, 220- or 400-pound barrels or 2,000-pound totes.
Both the feed ration blending and degummed soybean oil packaging are minor parts of the operation, amounting to less than 5 percent of sales.
- Story Courtesy of the Norfolk Daily News
