Mercer Landmark Inc.’s recently-acquired grain elevator near Latty, OH has been refurbished to handle a variety of summer- and fall-harvested crops. It previously served as wheat storage for the Mormon church. Aerial photo by Raines Aerial Productions, LLC, Wapakoneta, OH.
Latty, OH — Until recently, the 1.2-million-bushel slipform concrete elevator east of Latty, OH on State Highway 613 didn’t see a lot of activity. It was simply a place to hold soft red winter (SRW) wheat grown in northwest Ohio and hard red winter (HRW) wheat from out west until it was needed. And the owners mostly prayed that it wasn’t needed.
Since March 2020, however, the elevator has been part of the Mercer Landmark Inc. network of 14 elevators in that part of the state. It’s been completely refurbished to handle corn, soybeans, and SRW wheat and load it onto 85-car unit trains on the adjacent Norfolk Southern (NS) line using an existing mile-long siding.
“We replaced two legs, replaced a reclaim conveyor in the basement, and rehabilitated other equipment, including rebuilding an existing bulk weigh loadout scale,” says Heath Barnes, general manager and CEO. Barnes has been with Mercer Landmark for 2-1/2 years after working at grain facilities in the Pacific Northwest.
According to Barnes, the slipform concrete elevator originally was built in 1980 as a joint venture involving several cooperatives in the area.
The facility was sold in 2001 to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) to be used as long-term wheat storage. The Latty elevator was one of more than a dozen grain storage facilities around the United States used in this fashion to provide food supplies for its missions and for church members in the event of a major disaster. (The Mormon church still encourages individual households to maintain an emergency food supply.)
In recent years, the church has revised its policy on wheat storage, selling some elevators and operating others more like commercial operations. Barnes says Mercer Landmark took the opportunity to purchase the Latty elevator in March 2020 for its spot on the NS, in order to ship grain primarily to feed markets in the southeast.
“For the purpose they had, the Mormons had maintained the elevator for wheat storage,” Barnes says. “Anything else required an upgrade. The elevator had not been used to load rail in 20 years.”
To serve as general contractor and millwright on the roughly $4 million project, Mercer Landmark hired Elevator Services & Storage, Inc. (ESSI), Beaverdam, OH (419-643-5111).
“They were involved in the construction of the original elevator, and they still had all of the blueprints available to them,” says Barnes. “That gave them a lot of insight on what needed to be done.”
Work on the rehabilitation began shortly after Mercer Landmark took possession of the elevator in 2020. The cooperative loaded its first two unit trains in April 2021.
• A new transformer was installed outside of the elevator, boosting available power from 1,600 to 4,000 kVa.
• The existing bulk weigh loadout scale was retained but rebuilt from top to bottom. This was a challenging chore, since the bulkweigher was located inside of the slip to protect it from often harsh Ohio weather. The rebuilt bulkweigher is rated at 50,000 bph.
Bulkweigh operations were placed under control of a CompuWeigh CD-4000 controller. The system includes a trackside SmartRead IV scanner that reads data on individual railcar capacities for the controller to use to determine when to cut off the flow of grain into the railcar.
• An existing trolley unit from Fall Protection Systems was extended into the rail loading shed to protect workers atop railcars during loading operations.
• Two original 30,000-bph legs were replaced with a receiving leg rated at 30,000 bph and a combination receiving and loadout leg rated at 50,000 bph. They stand 230 and 245 feet tall respectively. Both were manufactured by Hawthorne-Seving Inc., ESSI’s manufacturing and fabrication operation.
The larger of the two legs is equipped with two rows of Maxi-Lift 24x8 CC-HD buckets mounted on a 51-inch ContiTech belt. The smaller 30,000-bph leg has three rows of Maxi-Lift 16x7 CC-HD buckets, also mounted on a 51-inch ContiTech belt.
• An old reclaim conveyor in the basement of the elevator was replaced with an AGI Hi Roller 50,000-bph enclosed belt conveyor. The new conveyor feeds the 50,000-bph loadout/receiving leg.
• Mercer Landmark had the entire elevator operation automated using an Innovative Controls Corporation (ICON) system, which provides for automatic shutdown of operations in the event of a plug or other serious condition and notification of responsible personnel.
Electrical work was just finishing up when Grain Journal visited the facility early in June 2021. In the meantime, additional work was planned for the remainder of the year.
• The cooperative plans to install a new grain dryer at Latty, the facility’s first. Model, manufacturer, and capacity had not been decided as of early June, Barnes says.
• Work had begun on installing a pair of Mettler Toledo 120-foot pitless truck scales adjacent to the facility office.
• Work also had begun on an expansion of an existing fertilizer plant. The expansion will include the addition of a new fertilizer operations building, 24 liquid fertilizer tanks, a 1.5-million-gallon tank for UAN, an office building, and a machine shop.
Ed Zdrojewski, editor