Nestled in the northeast corner of the state stands the nation’s largest single-location mill: North Dakota Mill and Elevator Association. That’s not the solo trait that makes it truly unique though. ND Mill, which it’s commonly referred to as, is the only state-owned mill in the country and opened in Grand Forks in 1922.
Along with Bank of North Dakota, it was created out of a farmers’ protest and written into North Dakota Century Code by the 1919 legislative assembly. The vision was to improve the value-added market for North Dakota wheat production, a vision that continues to drive its work today.
Although its operations have evolved over time, its mission “to promote and provide support to North Dakota agriculture, commerce and industry” has been steadfast. Fulfillment of its mission could be viewed as two-fold. One part involves generating a revenue that allows the mill to be self-funding and able to return a profit to its owners, the citizens of North Dakota. The other part is providing opportunities for North Dakota growers to be more profitable by receiving a better basis, which is the difference between the cash price and futures price of their wheat.
“The question ‘how do we provide more benefit to the farmers?’ has driven a lot of our expansion philosophy,” explains ND Mill and Elevator President and CEO Vance Taylor, who has led the mill for 24 years. “We grind more wheat, create more demand and increase the local basis on what the farmers and the elevators are able to get when they sell their wheat to us. It’s an important part of what we do.”
In its daily operations, ND Mill processes up to 140,000 bushels of wheat and produces 6.05 million pounds of flour and about 2 million pounds of byproduct.
In addition to producing high volumes of product, ND Mill Chief Financial Officer Cathy Dub says, “We’re able to offer the farmers a better basis for their grain because we’re the end user of that product. They’re not paying to ship the grain from here to Minneapolis or to any other markets that may be the end user for the product. We get to use that product here, mill it into flour, and then ship it to our customers.”
No unprocessed wheat leaves the Mill. In fact, more than 300 different types of flour, including conventional and organic products, come off the production lines. Nine out of 10 of its milling units process spring wheat with the last unit milling durum. It purchases the wheat directly from many of the state’s producers as well as from elevators across North Dakota. Taylor explains, “A key to our success is access to some of the best wheat in the world that’s produced in the state of North Dakota by our very skilled producers.”
Another key to success is ND Mill’s dedicated team. There are 170 full-time employees with various levels of education and skill sets working hard to produce and deliver quality products to its customers on time with excellent service.
Success also comes with challenges. ND Mill’s leadership is always strategizing and considering all aspects of its operations including items like food safety standards, maintaining its workforce, anticipating transport logistics and more.
A longstanding challenge ND Mill faced due to its continuous expansion over the past 10 years was the handling and storage of wheat middlings. Middlings, also referred to as midds, are a byproduct of wheat processing, which is commonly used for animal feed. ND Mill’s facility had the capacity to hold three hours’ worth of wheat midds from processing, which made it critical for trucks to be ready to haul the midds out at all times, or part of the milling process would shut down.
After years of planning for a new midds handling-and-storage facility, ND Mill received approval in 2021 of the $56 million project from the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which oversees the ND Mill.
Working with Bank of North Dakota to fund the project, ND Mill recently finished construction of its midds storage-and-handling facility. It was the largest single project that the ND Mill has undertaken since opening its doors in 1922. The new facility increases the midds storage from a few hours’ worth of processing to three days of storage, providing supply reliability conveniences to their midds customers.
“We have a lot of local ranchers, and they struggle to find trucks on weekends to load out,” says Michael Leddige, key account salesman for ND Mill. “Now, we’ll have the ability to load during the week when trucks are coming in to haul grain, and then they can take the midds back to the farm during the week. There is also excitement of not having to worry about storms and having the storage to handle all the midds during the week. If we do get a two-day snowstorm, it makes it a lot simpler overall.”
The new facility reduces the time drivers need to sit in line. While most of the midds customers are local, ND Mill also branches out to customers in Iowa and Nebraska and transports some by rail outside North Dakota to Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico and Canada for example.
ND Mill Packing and Loading Warehouse Superintendent Alan Sundby comments, “When it was talked about putting a new building up a handful of years ago, there was a lot of excitement to get a new facility because the way we’ve been doing it has basically been the same since 1922. It will be nice to be able to efficiently load feed trucks going forward.”
ND Mill’s Chief Financial Officer Cathy Dub adds, “The midds storage-and-handling facility here at the Mill is going to have great impacts on us financially, but also give us a lot of room to run our business in truly the most efficient way, which is going to obviously increase our profits and just be an all-around better process for us. We’re excited to be moving into a facility that better fits our size and is going to allow us much more efficiency.”
While the midds facility is one facet of its operations, it’s an important piece to meet the Mills’ goal of reducing waste and providing value add.
An average consumer may see the Dakota Maid flour product on local grocery shelves, but the majority of ND Mill’s flour product is sold in bulk. In addition to its North Dakota customers, main market areas include New York City and down the east coast, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and the surrounding areas. The product is shipped by railcar or trucked out, some of which route to ND Mill’s many transfer sites in the market areas.
“Sixty percent of our products are shipped out by bulk railcar. Many of those go to the largest bakeries across the country,” Taylor explains. “On the outbound flour side, we ship about 20 bulk trucks a day, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 van loads a day of bag product, and on top of that, we ship about 15 to 20 bulk rail cars per day to all parts of the country.”
The nationwide market helps ND Mill create a favorable market for the state’s grain producers and elevators as well as turn a profit on its operations. Fifty percent of the profits are returned to the State of North Dakota and the general fund. These accomplishments come from the ND Mill’s proficient handling of operational logistics from the intake of wheat to the milling and selling of the flour to getting it to the end consumers.
Taylor expresses, “We couldn’t do what we do without the support of the Industrial Commission, which acts as the board for the ND Mill, Bank of North Dakota, the Legislature and our local government here. They’re great to work with and give us the support that we need to do the business we do.”
With no guidebooks on running the only state-owned mill in the country, everything ND Mill achieves is trailblazing and benefits the state of North Dakota, its producers and citizens. Dub adds, ”We’re able to offer the residents of North Dakota and grain producers of the state of North Dakota better returns and a greater advantage by using the tools from Bank of North Dakota to invest in and grow our business.
