by Lacey Seibert
Vice President of Grain & Logistics
In today’s competitive grain markets, ALCIVIA has strong incentives to use a variety of strategies for reducing variable costs of handling grain. Train-loading elevators—high capacity, high-speed grain loading facilities—are a great example of an innovative solution that improves efficiency and provides greater market access to ALCIVIA members. These facilities provide improved operational efficiency, reduced transportation costs, and attract grain from further distances.
ALCIVIA has a 110-car shuttle loading facility on the Union Pacific Railroad, in Evansville, WI. Corn, beans, and wheat trains from Evansville find their way to feeders, processors, and export facilities in Wisconsin, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, the Gulf, and the Pacific Northwest. The Evansville facility has dumping capacity of 50,000 bushels per hour and storage capacity of 10,000,000 bushels. In the 2021 fiscal year, the Evansville team utilized the site’s 40,000 bushel per hour load-out capacity to ship over 15,000,000 bushels.
In Whitewater and Cottage Grove, ALCIVIA loads 25 car sets on the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad. Bushels from these facilities are sold to processors in Wisconsin and Illinois. Between Cottage Grove and Whitewater, ALCIVIA has 6,500,000 bushels of storage capacity. Each dumping 35,000 bushels per hour and loading out 15,000 bu. per hour, these sites collectively moved out 7,000,000 bushels of corn, soybeans, and wheat in the 2021 fiscal year.
On the Canadian Pacific Railway, ALCIVIA’s Fall River, facility, loads 110-car shuttles of corn, soybeans, and wheat to feeders, processors, and export facilities in Illinois, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest. In the 2021 fiscal year, the Fall River facility put it’s 40,000 bushel per hour dumping capacity and it’s 80,000 bushel per hour load-out capacity to work, receiving and shipping out over 8,800,000 bushels making great use of the sites 4,900,000 bushels of storage capacity.
ALCIVIA’s diverse market access through 3 different rail networks has provided members the opportunity to respond to year over year variability in competitive grain markets. The ALCIVIA team is focused on keeping a pulse on which markets are demanding grain and utilizing rail assets to respond. In the last year, ALCIVIA has made significant investments in maintaining the railroad tracks around these facilities as well as the storage and dumping capacities. ALCIVIA’s train-loading elevators are key to its vision of customer success powered by engaged employees.