Alfalfa compression plant to occupy former Ace warehouse

 3 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

By MATT OLBERDING/Lincoln Journal Star

A Florida company’s plans for the former Ace Hardware distribution center in northwest Lincoln could be a boon to alfalfa growers in several states.

Southeast Ranch LLC, which describes itself as a large-scale cattle ranching and hay exporting operation headquartered near Miami, Fla., plans to open an alfalfa hay compressing plant in the 341,000-square-foot building.  It should be operational sometime this month.

Ron Sorensen, Southeast Ranch’s marketing director, says the company is already buying hay for the operation.

“I would guess in the next couple of weeks, the first bales are going to be shipped by rail,” Sorensen said.

He said the company is looking to buy dry alfalfa from farmers within a 250-mile radius of Lincoln. Southeast Ranch will accept small square, large square and round bales and will send trucks out to pick  up the alfalfa.

Bob Bremer, who grows alfalfa near Walton, called news of the plant “fantastic.”

“I’m very interested in it,” said Bremer, who said he plans to get more information about Southeast Ranch and find out whether he may qualify to sell to them.

Once the alfalfa the company buys reaches the Lincoln plant, it will be processed into what’s called a chopped bale and then loaded on railcars bound for Jacksonville, Fla.

There, the alfalfa will be put on ships bound for places such as the Middle East, Asia and Europe.   Virtually all of it will go overseas.

Sorensen said worldwide demand for alfalfa hay is growing, driven by dairy expansion, increasing horse numbers and increasing use of alfalfa as a feed source for other livestock.

 There are only a few areas in the world where alfalfa can be grown, and one of those is the Midwestern United States.

Sorensen said access to that market was one of the reasons Southeast Ranch chose Lincoln for its second alfalfa compressing plant — the other one is in Rapid City, S.D. But a big reason it chose Lincoln was the availability of a large building that was served by a rail line.

He said the alfalfa plant will be “pretty much a year-round operation,” so it needs a lot of storage space.

Despite its size, the alfalfa processing operation will not create a  lot of jobs. Sorensen said he didn’t know how many full-time people would be hired, but he said it would likely be less than 15.

“We basically need people to move hay around,” he said.

The Ace distribution center employed about 80 people before it shut down in 2006.

Though Southeast Ranch won’t be bringing a lot of jobs to Lincoln, it will be nice to get a large building off the list of vacant properties, said Jason Smith, vice president of the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development.

“It’s nice to see activity in a building like that, especially one that size,” Smith said.

Reach Matt Olberding at 473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com.