The venture will triple the unloading and warehouse capacity for corn, soybeans and wheat now being handled at Dana, a town on the Illinois-Indiana border west of Indianapolis and located in the heart of the U.S. Corn Belt.
Cargill AgHorizons, a unit of Cargill, and Agrex Inc, a grain firm based in Overland Park, Kansas, will form AC Grain LLC, a 50-50 joint venture, to own and operate Cargill's grain elevator in Dana.
The elevator location is served by the CSX railroad.
Rail track space will increase to 90 cars from 65 cars and rail load capacity will expand to 50,000 bushels per hour from 20,000 bushels. Grain drying capacity will be quadrupled. The expansion is expected to be completed in time for the Fall, 2013, harvest.
The grain elevator in Dana supplies corn to processors in the southeastern United States and to ethanol manufacturing plants in Indiana and Ohio. Soybeans from Dana are shipped to Cargill's oilseed plants in the southeast.
Agrex said the joint venture will provide additional supplies for Agrex's export terminal in Mobile, Alabama, and for the company's domestic sales channels handled in its Bowling Green, Ohio, office. (Reuters)
