OMAHA, NEB. — Ardent Mills L.L.C. has closed its Fremont, Neb., flour mill. Seventeen employees at the mill were notified of the plans for the closing in late April, and production ceased about a month later.
Ardent Mills said it will continue to operate Fremont as a grain elevator for “the foreseeable future.”
The mill had daily milling capacity of 6,700 cwts of flour and also produced wheat germ. The elevator has 1,200,000 bus of grain storage capacity and is served by the BNSF Railway and the Union Pacific Railroad Co.
Fremont is about 35 miles northwest of Omaha.
“Customers and vendors will be transitioned to other Ardent Mills community mills,” the company said. “Some team members may be able to transition to one of two nearby Ardent Mills’ facilities — Omaha North or Omaha South community mills.”
The Omaha mills have combined milling capacity of 15,000 cwts.
The flour mill closing is the first announced by Ardent Mills since the company was established in 2014 as a combination of the flour milling businesses of Horizon Milling Co. and ConAgra Foods, Inc. The closing is the first in the U.S. milling industry since H. Nagel and Son Co. closed a mill in Brookville, Ohio, in 2015.
With the closing, Ardent Mills operates 36 U.S. flour mills with daily milling capacity of 475,800 cwts, based on information published in the Grain & Milling Annual.
Formerly part of the Brown’s Consolidated Mills, the Fremont mill was acquired by Nebraska Consolidated Mills (later renamed ConAgra) in 1926, only seven years after Nebraska Consolidated was established. The mill was idle at the time of the acquisition. Ardent Mills said the Fremont Mill is 112 years old.
