CPM Beta Raven Wants to Be Your Feed Facility Partner

When California Pellet Mill (CPM) acquired Beta Raven from Raven Industries, Inc. in 2002, it purchased a company with 30 years of experience in automation solutions. Headquartered in St. Charles, MO, Beta Raven was founded with a goal of providing control solutions for the feed industry ranging from individual procedures to full facility automation.

CPM Beta Raven’s Larry Beck, general manager, and Scott Grayson, business development manager, spoke with Feed & Grain about the company and its place in the feed industry.

“We were founded when facilities started to need more control over their manual operations,” says Grayson. “That need is still there today, many of the projects we work on are mill operations evolving from manual to automated controls due to feed facilities’ increasing requirements to track a lot of data they didn't need in the past.”

CPM Beta Raven has been around for over 40 years, since the beginning days of automation in the feed industry. This means that if a problem comes up or a solution is needed, more than likely they’ve seen it before.

“It may sound cliché, but the amount of experience we have in this company truly makes the difference in many of the projects we do,” Grayson says. “Many of our coworkers have been with us for 30 years or more, that experience provides a solid foundation of customer support that's hard to match.”

Grayson says that the earlier you involve CPM Beta Raven in a project, the more that experience will work in a client’s favor.

“With the level of experience, we have on our team, relying on us at the beginning of any project will help minimize costly issues from unexpectedly appearing as the project moves forward,” Grayson explains.

Experience is often seen as the antithesis of innovation, but CPM Beta Raven has worked hard to gather a balanced coworker base to bring the best of both worlds to the projects on which they work.

“We have made a major investment in fresh engineering talent,” says Beck. “With this talent comes fresh ideas and technology.”

Beta Raven knows the value of innovation and practices a field-driven approach to it. Their best source of new ideas is the guy in the field.

“We don't just sit in a boardroom trying to come up with what the industry will need,” Grayson says. “We respond to project requests and what our customers request, then develop solutions.”

The relationships CPM Beta Raven has with fellow CPM business units are another major strength. If an end user is buying other equipment from a CPM company, Beta Raven has control solutions to match.

“The synergistic engineering between us and other CPM divisions allows us to develop control solutions alongside the equipment they're developing,” says Beck.

Being there at the beginning, whether at the conception of a piece of equipment or a facility, is key to overcoming the many challenges that those in the feed industry face.

“We live in an age where companies need the best industrial automation solutions to operate a feed mill while staying in compliance with government regulations and maintaining customer relations,” says Beck.

CPM Beta Raven wants to provide those solutions and has made customer service one of the cornerstones of its operations to help facilities with their challenges.

“Our sales guys have taken calls in the middle of the night because a client has had a problem,” Grayson says. “When things come up in the field, our people are there to help no matter when they spring up.”

“We want the companies we work with to see us as partners in the industry, not just solutions providers,” explains Beck.

For more information on CPM, visit the Feed & Grain Buyers Guide. Contact Larry Beck at 636-255-1600 or [email protected], and follow them on twitter @CPMBetaRaven or Facebook @CaliforniaPelletMill.

The Suppliers Side is a biweekly blog that dives in-depth into the companies that service the feed manufacturing and grain handling industries. For any questions or comments please contact Steven Kilger at [email protected].