MFA’s Aurora mill named commercial dry feed facility of the year
The mill is an interesting mix of new and old. It consists of two adjoining towers and two warehouses.
By Sarah Muirhead
Taking the top honor in the American Feed Industry Association/Feedstuffs Feed Facility of the Year award program for 2023 in the commercial dry category is MFA’s feed mill in Aurora, Missouri.
The mill is an interesting mix of new and old. It consists of two adjoining towers and two warehouses. The multi-species mill is a medicated feed-approved facility. It also is Safe Feed/Safe Food certified.
Annually, the mill produces more than 40,000 tons of feed. It employs a team of 14 when fully staffed and operates two shifts. All but the office staff and management team are union-based. The mill is under the management leadership of Trevor Erwin.
The south tower of the mill is estimated to have been built in the late 1960s. The north tower was built in 1999.
Over the years, new equipment has been added to the original south tower, and processes in both towers have been automated.
Bulk and 50 lb. bags of feed are produced in several forms, including a 11/64-inch pellet, a 1/8-inch pellet, cubes, and crumbles. The mill’s finishing bins can hold 500-600 tons of bulk feed. The warehouse can hold upward of 500 tons of finished feed.
The mill has a single four-ton mixer that supplies mash feed to its three pellet mills. Mash feed also can be sent straight to bulk bins from the mixer.
Texture feed is produced by taking a premix pellet and adding a combination of whole cotton, oats, flaked corn, chopped corn, soy oil, propionic acid and molasses.
All bagged feed is run through a robot stacker. The bagger has an automated gusset reformer system that allows for bags of many different sizes.
The mill has two receiving systems – one in each tower. The receiving system in the north tower can reach the ingredient bins in both towers as well as several of the finished feed bins. It also can send product to the bins for bagging. “This system gives us great flexibility throughout the mill,” said Erwin.
Currently, the team is in the process of converting the plant’s mixing, pelletizing, loadout, and receiving systems over to a new automation system. Easy Automation programming will be installed throughout the mill by next summer. A new system for the batching mixer has already been installed, noted Erwin.
The mill runs three pellet mills: two 125-hp dual speed mills and one 200-hp pellet mill. Nicknamed the “north mill,” the 200-hp mill was upgraded this past summer. The upgrade included a new Bliss Op Flo cooler, cooler fan with ductwork, oil cooler, fines return ductwork, and a complete rebuild of the pellet mill transmission.
The new cooler can process 16-20 tons of pellets per hour, compared to its previous capacity of 12-16 tons per hour. It also is equipped with a leveling system that keeps the product spread out and more efficiently cooled, which leads to better pellet durability.
The maintenance shop at the Aurora mill serves as the hub for keeping the mill operational but also plays a role across the entire MFA system in that it’s where pellet mills for all mills are rebuilt. With all pellet mills and parts in a single location, lost time is less of an issue when a mill goes down. The team at Aurora back charges the other mills for the repair and parts costs.
“Overall, we are making a higher-quality pellet with better flowability, reduced housekeeping, and all of it is streamlined by new technology,” Erwin said.
