October 14, 2009
Columbia Farms opens new poultry feed mill
The US$23 million chicken feed plant Columbia Farms has opened in Corner, Georgia US that can produce up to 10,000 tonnes of feed a week.
The new Columbia Farms chicken feed mill is the tallest building in Madison County and stands 17 stories tall â€" so high that a blinking light was put on the top to warn low-flying aircraft.
According to daily Athens Banner-Herald, the towering structure provides more than just a 30-mile view, it will also produce 8,000 tonnes of feed for north-east Georgia chicken farmers in the Columbia Farms fold, said complex manager, Barry Cronic.
Cronic said the feed goes directly from here to our poultry farms and their goal is to fill the could do 10,000 tonnes of feed a week.
Madison County officials hope farmers who supplied Pilgrim''s Pride â€" which closed an Athens processing plant last week- might strike a deal with Columbia Farms.
Cronic said the giant''s closing affected growers and that Columbia Farms will pick some of them up."
Columbia Farms, a division of the North Carolina-based House of Raeford, is moving its feed operations and a dozen jobs to Madison County from Lavonia. The company will keep most of its offices in Lavonia, said Ken Qualls, vice president of finance.
But the new location on Georgia Highway 72 just east of Comer made perfect sense for the feed mill, Qualls said, especially because of its direct access to the passing railway.
Having better access is needed because feed mills are getting older and that corn and soy come on railroad lines.
A special diesel-powered tractor drags train cars filled with corn and soy into the mill, where they are emptied onto a conveyer belt below the ground. The belt takes the corn and beans to a vacuum that lifts them up onto another belt inside, where they run through two mills. The by-product is mixed with other ingredients, heated and milled again into feed pellets. The pellets then are stored in the grain elevator and dropped into trucks waiting on the other side of the complex for shipment.
Everything in the mill runs on a boiler powered by wood debris from a Barrow County timber company and controlled by two computers, Cronic said.
Production manager, Scott Cochran, sits behind the desk in the control room, keeping track of each process- from receiving to shipping- on three computer monitors.
Madison County officials expect to see a sizable impact to the local economy, according to Athens Banner-Herald.
The land value will add to the county''s tax digest, Madison County commission chairman, Anthony Dove, said.