Mennel Milling Growing Despite Low Carb Lifestyles, Two Major Projects Planned

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Privately held specialty wheat flour manufacturer, Mennel Milling Company (Fostoria, Ohio) is planning two major expansion projects to expand its capacity for producing soft wheat flour.

The grain milling industry has been hit hard lately, due to America's fascination with low-carb dieting, and the industry's growth has been relatively flat over the past few years. It does help to have a large customer experiencing growth and asking for more capacity. General Mills, one of Mennel Milling's major customers, is asking for additional flour output.

Plans are coming together for the company to construct a brand new $6 million flour mill that will be located at one of the company’s grain elevator sites in Bucyrus, Ohio.

The company selected Ibberson Engineering Incorporated (Hopkins, Minnesota) to construct a 5,000 square foot multi-story building and Buhler Incorporated (Minneapolis, Minnesota) to provide and install the milling equipment for a 5,000 hundredweight tons soft wheat mill.

Construction on the building portion of the project is scheduled to begin within the next 30 days, and the equipment should begin arriving on-site by November of this year for installation. Construction is scheduled to be completed by mid-year 2006.

Mennel is also looking into selling its property in Roanoke, Virginia, where it operates another mill, to an area developer. The company plans to relocate that operation to a new location in Roanoke by mid-2006. A new $20 million mill will be built and the capacity will be increased from 540,000 pounds per day to in excess of 750,000 pounds per day.

Construction is scheduled to begin on the Virginia project by May 2005.

Mennel Milling Company has been milling wheat into specialty flours for over 118 years. Its flours are not only used by nationally known companies, but also by independent bakers. While one would not see Mennel’s name on the store shelf, its flour is in a majority of the cake mixes, cookies, snack crackers, breadings, batters, gravies, soups, ice cream cones, pretzels, oriental noodles, and regional branded breads that one would recognize.

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