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ZFS Creston LLC announced Thursday morning it has signed an agreement to purchase a soybean processing facility, soy flour mill, grain elevator and non-GMO soybean inventories in Creston from CHS Inc.
The announcement came just short of four months after CHS Inc. announced Dec. 1, 2017, it was permanently closing the Creston facility.
ZFS Creston LLC is an affiliate of Zeeland Farm Services Inc..
“We’re looking forward to working with the people of Creston,” Cliff Meeuwsen, ZFS Creston president, said in an interview with the CNA Thursday afternoon. “We look at it as a great opportunity. We look forward to meeting the people of Creston and being a long-term employer there.”
Meeuwsen said the company’s human resources team will be in Creston today to start interviews with “key people.” From there, the team will interview some former CHS Inc. employees.
The company will look to employ around 50 people, physically located in Creston, to begin testing the plant and making some changes and additions to the plant. Meeuwsen said the company will also provide some support from the offices in Zeeland, Michigan, and will hire some sales positions that could be located anywhere in the world.
ZFS Creston is working to restart production as soon as possible.
“We need to get the employees hired. We need to get several projects in the plant complete. We need to do some government regulatory things and get those complete,” Meeuwsen said. “We need to establish a customer base, and we will look to start the plant as soon as possible. We are going to do a bunch of testing at the plant to make sure things run properly.”
ZFS Creston will concentrate principally on soy processing, both for food products and feed products. Meeuwsen said it’s possible the company will have some transportation there, both by rail and by truck.
The area of service will be everything from the Pacific Rim to Europe to U.S. customers.
“We’ll be buying soybeans from the general farm community, both non-GMO and GMO,” Meeuwsen said. “We’ll also be looking at some contract opportunities for the farm community in the future – growing of specialty soybeans will probably be the most important one we’ll look at.”
Zeeland Farm Services is a family business, started in 1950, with experience in soy processing, corn processing, transportation logistics and marketing of soy and corn products. The company has locations in Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
“We treat our people with respect and we have long-term employees,” Meeuwsen said. “We’ve built a customer base and we believe in fair treatment to our customer, our employees and the surrounding community.”
Meeuwsen said Zeeland Farm Services had previous interest in purchasing the Creston facility, but it did not work out at that time.
He said the both the plant and its products fits in with what the Zeeland, Michigan, plant does, and that purchasing the plant would benefit Zeeland Farm Services as well as create jobs in Creston again.