The Farmers Cooperative Feed Mill in south Beatrice, NE, was recently upgraded with an automated bagger and a robotic feed stacker, reports the Beatrice Daily Sun.
“The materials that we bag are all weighed,” Ron Hodges, Beatrice feed mill manager, told the Sun. “The bag is blown open with air and filled. It is sewn shut, travels on the conveyor belt to a smasher that takes the air out, then to the robotic stacker and placed on a pallet.
“It’s all computerized and we’re still working out the kinks, but we have it set up to do 12 bags a minute," he continues.
Currently, Beatrice is the only feed mill within the Farmer’s Cooperative with the robotic technology.
Farmers Cooperative employees approximately 620 people at the 62 sites in the company. There are 114 employees in Gage County with 14 in the feed mill in Beatrice.
