Central Missouri AgriService rebuilding Slater facility with $5M restoration after April tornado
SLATER, Mo. (KMIZ)
It has been a busy past six months for Central Missouri AgriService's Slater location in Saline County, according to manager Tedd Wiseman.
After an EF-2 tornado tore through CMAS's grain elevators and damaged eight bins in April, the agricultural supply and grain-handling company has been working through a hefty cleanup and rebuilding process.
"Clean up was strenuous," Wiseman wrote in an email. "It took about 16 days straight cleaning up the soybeans that were in a couple of the heavily damaged bins, our crew here at CMAS worked long hours to get our grain picked up and hauled to another location."
About 10,000 bushels of beans were lost, a low figure according to Wiseman, because of how diligently the team worked to salvage supply.
"We figured that we were somewhere around 30 to 40% loss on the total amount of bushels that we had here when the tornado hit. And it ended up being somewhere around about 4 or 5% we actually lost," Wiseman said. "So that was a blessing in disguise there, too." And and really that that has a lot to do with the employees hard work of of really cleaning the place up as best they could and.
He attributed that minimal loss to the hard work of his employees who "had to basically suck them [beans] up with a vacuum.”
But the damages still disrupted parts of harvest season.
“We have not been able to handle any soybeans this fall. So that does put a little bit of pressure in a negative light for our customer base and stuff. And they've got to find different places and different options.”
The damaged bins and spilled supply were cleared by late spring. But CMAS was then left to figure out how to rebuild.
"We have taken advantage of the tragic event to upgrade our receiving equipment as well as our load out," Wiseman wrote.
The rebuild will look completely different than before the storm. The familiar landscape residents once drove past, of eight tall bins, will be no more. After a more than $5 million restoration, two larger bins will house commodities.
These more modern bins will be 60 and 105 feet in diameter, respectively, and hold 300,000 bushels more than the eight lost, Wiseman said.
"So that's a really big deal," Wiseman said. "We're going to grow by about 40% storage wise.”
He said a silver lining of the storm is that it has given CMAS a chance to upgrade and expand.
“For a location that had some age on it, we kind of get to move into the modernness of today's agriculture," Wiseman said. "In the grand scheme of things, we'll be able to handle quite a little bit more grain here a lot more efficiently."
There is also more space for possible future bins. The total rebuild should be complete by the end of the year.
"This has been 100% an insurance project," Wiseman said. "We have looked into and been reached out about some relief fund stuff, some low interest loans, stuff like that. But I'd be really shocked if we go down any of those roads. It's primarily an insurance deal. And what insurance doesn't cover, we'll put some of our capital in."
