JEROME, Idaho — Scoular officials, employees and the community gathered this week to mark the completion of the company’s $20 million expansion at its feed blending facility.

The expansion will allow the company to offer additional custom feed blends for dairy and beef producers.

The expansion will facilitate:

• A steamflaking process that processes corn and barley into flakes and makes the feed more digestible for cattle. The corn is steamed, heated and 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.

The new feed mill was built to meet the growing and changing demands of customers, said Andy Hohwieler, a Scoular regional manager based in Twin Falls.

“We’re just very excited about this investment, what it will do for our customers,” he said.

Precision products

The expansion is Scoular’s first foray into calf grains. The facility is able to produce 60 tons of flakes an hour and 20 tons of pellets an hour, he said.

The expansion represents precision manufacturing to meet the need for precision products, said David Faith, Scoular chairman of the board.

Confidence in the Jerome team made it easy to get behind the investment, said Paul Maass, Scoular CEO.

He also recognized partner contractors, the community and the business-friendly atmosphere.

“This is a great place to invest … we don’t take that for granted,” he said.

The expansion is a testament of Scoular’s service and solutions to meet the needs of the dairy and beef industries, said Mike Williams, Jerome city manager.

A win-win

Bettencourt Dairies’ purpose is to provide the highest quality, sustainable food, and it operates with a win-win attitude.

The company’s relationship with Scoular is also a win-win, said Jeff Ackerman, Bettencourt COO.

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 use 12,000 barley acres.

Scoular intends to fire up the new operations the first of October and plans to be processing commercially by the end of October.

The company also operates several grain-handling facilities in Idaho.

Headquartered in Omaha, Neb., Scoular is an $8 billion global agribusiness.