It’s been over two years since a major explosion happened at the Landus site in Jefferson and the re-build is now complete.

On May 14, 2021, there was an explosion caused by grain dust to one of its concrete silos. However, even though there was significant structural damage no one was hurt or died. Since then, Landus has replaced the damaged 1950s areas with new and upgraded technology. CEO Matt Carstens talks about one of the improvements was a venting system that can better handle the grain dust when it is being loaded onto the rail system. He talks about another improvement is an advancement of handling wet grain from farmers.

“So we now are 10x, the wet storage we had here on site, and then we also more than doubled our capacity of the drying side. So really, one dryer we refurbished and then one is a brand new dryer that takes us to right at 12,000 bushels an hour that we can dry.”

  

Other additions included all receiving capacity was replaced with two new 20,000 bushels per hour receiving pits for a total of 80,000 bushels per hour capacity and loading 440,000 bushels of grain, or about 110 railcars in six hours using only one computer and a single remote control. The first train with Union Pacific Railroad that used this new technology was on April 26th. Carstens describes the importance of maintaining the rail system for the cooperative.

“The biggest that will always be here is we have to export that grain and put it on railcars and send it (to) the ports, to export to other countries, even use in other parts of the United States that feed livestock or other pieces of the business. So we’re really fortunate we have that right here in Jefferson and kept that here as now a modern rail facility.”    

The Jefferson site is back up to a capacity of eight million bushels that it can store. Everything that was damaged in the explosion is now fully operational again. Additionally, another new feature that was revealed is converting the former beef feed mill into a soybean treatment center, with the anticipated operational date of the end of this year.