JEROME, Idaho — Scoular is breaking ground this month on a $20 million expansion at its feed blending facility in Jerome, Idaho, with completion set for spring 2024.

The company’s existing facility provides custom feed blends for dairy and beef producers.

The expansion will add two key capabilities:

• A steamflaking process, which processes corn into flakes and makes the feed more digestible for cattle. The corn is steamed, heated, then pressed into a flake.

• A pellet mill to make feed pellets, which are easy to transfer, handle and proportion for optimal nutrition. Feed pellets typically are used for feeding calves and beef cattle.

“Agriculture drives the Magic Valley’s economy, and Scoular has made it a priority to support the industry through innovation, state-of-the-art facilities and programs that support local producers,” said Andy Hohwieler, a Scoular regional manager based in Twin Falls.

“With our latest investment, we look forward to creating new feed products that create solutions for end-users,” he said.

In 2021, Scoular built a 1,500-square-foot facility in Jerome that manufactures Emerge, a one-of-a-kind sustainable barley protein concentrate for pet food and aquafeed. The plant can process 1.7 billion to 1.8 billion bushels of barley annually with a capacity to consume 12,000 barley acres.

Emerge is the plant’s No. 1 product, but the company will also convert starch from the process into syrup for a high-energy liquid feed supplement for livestock, he said.

In 2021, the company launched a program in Idaho, called Barley MVP, to expand barley as a sustainable rotation crop. The program provides a variety of risk management tools and high-yielding seed varieties for farmers.

Scoular also operates several grain handling facilities in Idaho.

Headquartered in Omaha, Neb., Scoular is a $9.7 billion global agribusiness.