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New soybean processing facility creates opportunity for Ohio farmers

The soybean processing industry continues its growth as demand for biofuels rise. Louis Dreyfus recently announced plans to break ground on a facility in Upper Sandusky, Ohio in early 2024.

Steve Reinhard is vice chair of the United Soybean Board and farms in Bucyrus, Ohio, about 20 miles east of the new plant. He tells Brownfield this is good news for farmers in his area. “We’ve had increasing soybean yields over the last several years and I think this is going to be a good thing to help alleviate some of the basis struggles we’ve had,” he says. “Especially during harvest time.”

Reinhard says the expansion of soybean processing capacity is also beneficial to the animal agriculture industry. “Animal ag is our biggest customer to soybeans,” he says. “And that continues.”

He says soybeans provide solutions for the challenges facing the U.S. “To make sure that soybeans are a vital part of our energy future and the oil, of course, is a big part of that,” he says. “And then when we look at food security, we know that soybeans are a big part of that as we talk about the protein availability that we have for our animal agriculture sector.”

The new facility will also provide an option to participate in renewable energy feedstock markets to help meet the growing demand for biofuels.

It will have an annual soy crushing capacity of 1.5 MMT, annual edible soybean oil production capacity of 320,000 MT, and annual lecithin production capacity of 7,500 MT.

AUDIO: Steve Reinhard, Ohio farmer