North Central Ohio co-op grows through changes

By Michael Carter

RFD NEWS

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FREMONT — In the fall of 1996, George Secor came to Fre­mont to become Pres­i­dent and CEO of the then Coun­try Springs Farm­ers Co-op.

At that time, Rural Serve in Fre­mont, River Springs in Green Springs and the Belle­vue Farm­ers co-op merged to form Coun­try Springs.

That busi­ness expanded 11 years later merg­ing with Sun­rise Co-op con­sol­i­dat­ing all the operations.

“In Sep­tem­ber of 2007 we merged with Sun­rise from Nor­walk keep­ing that name but leav­ing the main office here in Fre­mont,” Secor said recently. In 2009 the co-op expanded again adding Co-Star from Bucyrus to its family.

“We were mainly Ag-based until the merge with Sun­rise and their propane busi­ness,” Secor said.

“With the addi­tion of their energy busi­ness, we became more involved with the res­i­den­tial end of that busi­ness,” he added.

Sun­rise is now involved with three sep­a­rate divi­sions inside its fam­ily. The main busi­ness is grain sales, fol­lowed by agron­omy, which includes the sale of fer­til­izer, seed and chemicals.

The third divi­sion is the energy por­tion of the busi­ness, which cov­ers sales in liq­uid fuels such as diesel, gas and propane.

“In 1996 the com­pany did $60 mil­lion in total busi­ness,” Secor said about the old co-op.

“We just fin­ished our fis­cal period on the 31st of August and totaled $560 mil­lion this year,” he added. Sun­rise also has more growth in its future.

The co-op did $400 mil­lion in grain sales this past year.

Its three largest ele­va­tors are located in Clyde, 8 mil­lion bushel stor­age; Clarks­field with 7.3 mil­lion in stor­age; and Crest­line with 6 mil­lion. The com­pany has the abil­ity to hold 26 mil­lion bushel total at any one time.

“We have loaded six to eight trains already just out of the Clyde co-op,” Secor said about this har­vest sea­son. “We hope with in the next week to load another 10 to 12 more,” he added.

Each train load is filled with 300,000 bushel of grain.

Sun­rise also has stor­age in Bal­lville, Clyde, Mon­roeville, Clarks­field, New Wash­ing­ton, Bucyrus and Crestline.

Secor added that Sun­rise also did $100 mil­lion in its agron­omy por­tion of its busi­ness, includ­ing sales of fer­til­izer, seed and chem­i­cals used in farming.

“Our seed is not your aver­age seed. Tech­nol­ogy has come so far with seed and has so greatly devel­oped its strength that it adds to yields,” Secor said.

“Even with the ter­ri­ble spring and the very late plant­ing sea­son, we are going to have our best soy­bean har­vest ever,” Secor said.

“Our area was very for­tu­nate on how things worked out,” he added about 2011.

“Once the late plant­ing did get fin­ished, weather could not have been bet­ter. Things turned very hot in June and July, and at least locally — we received just the right amount of rain around July 13 to make it such a great crop,” the CEO explained.

Sun­rise also did $60 mil­lion in energy sales of liq­uid fuel. Their liq­uid sales includes deliv­er­ing diesel and gas to farm­ers and propane to both farm­ers and res­i­den­tial cus­tomers. “We also did $2 to 3 mil­lion in feed sales,” Secor added.

As for con­tin­ued growth, the co-op is cur­rently expand­ing its Clarks­field loca­tion by adding more receiv­ing tanks and a new scales.

Secor also said that Sun­rise plans to expand the agron­omy por­tion of its Nor­walk loca­tion in 2012.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Nov 28 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.