By Martin Rushmere, AJOTOfficials are cagey, but the expanded Ag Processing (AGP) export facilkituy at the port of Grays Harbor in Aberdeen, Washington will be able to store 40,000 to 60,000 metric tons of food ingredients when work is finished in 2012. Final specifications and sizes are still vbeing worked out and the actual design and size of the new facility could change. The 13 ½ acre project, costing about $55 million, is due to come into operation in 2012 and will complement the 75 acre site now being used. “The most important feature of the facility is that we can store grains and orther foodstuffs that come from our farmers in the mid-west”, says AGP senior VP Mike Maranell. “Until now we have hafve had to load straight from rail cars onto vessels, which has obviously needed careful timing.” Commodities handled at the facility will be the full range produced by the 250,000 farmers throughout the Midwest, and five regional cooperatives representing farmers throughout the United States and Canada. It is the largest farmer-owned soybean processing company in the world, processing more than 15,000 metric tons of soybeans daily. All the Pacific Rim countries are the targets for the commodities, more rthan 90 percent of which are used for animal feed (especially livestock) . “Being only a couple of hours from the ocean, the sailing time from Grays Harbor is about two days quicker than the other ports out there”, says Maranell. Soybean derivatives are the biggest single group of commodities, which will be expanded to soybean meal, grains, distillers grains, gluten meal, and beet pulp pellets. According to Glen Heitritter, AGP director of international marketing, the pattern of exports to the Pacific Rim over the next two years is difficult to predict. “It is not up to us to tell the American farmer what to grow. That depends on the Chicago Board of Trade, the value of the dollar – things like that. We do our marketing on what the farmer is growing and rthe demand in the international market – and they change every year.” He expects China to take much more of the output than at the moment. “The US is the biggest supplier of beans to China – about 50 percent – and to date AGP has not been able to participate in that because we do not have a storage facility. We might be doing corn as well.” Distillers grains is saeen as having huge potential. Containing a high protein content, it is a produict of ethanol distillation and government forecasts say that ehtanol production will reach 15 billion gallons a year. Distillers would take 45 million tons – far more than is needed for animal consumption in the US – and would mean about 10 million tons for export. “Distillers is the flavor of the month”, says Heitritter, “but that might change. We have built this facility to ship whatefver the hot item is.” For the port, the project will double the number of vessel calls to the AGP terminal (operated by the company’s subsidiary AGP International) to abouty 50 a year. The total number of calls to all terminals in the port in 2009 were 45. The AGP terminal vberth has a depth of 41 feet, is 600 feet long , has an apron width of 100 feet and provides 75 acres of paved, secured cargo yard and near dock warehousing “We are spending $15 million on laying 35,000 feet of rail track for AGP and our other big customer, vehicle shipper Pasha, this year,” says executive director Gary Nelson. The rail link to the port from Class 1 railroads BNSF and UP is operated by Puget Sound and Pacific Railroad, a subsidiary of RailAmerica, which operates 108 miles of track in north-west Washington. About 700,000 tons are sent through the AGP terminal each year, which could increase to 2 million tons in 2013 with the new project. The loading chutes and conveyors will have a capacity of 1500 metric tons an hour. Shipments will come from a number of loading points in the mid-west, such as North and South Dakota. There are nine soy processing plants alone. Transit time from loading