Tony Flagg, president of United Grain Corp., the Mitsui subsidiary that's building the Bucyrus shuttle elevator, said the Bucyrus project is part of a $55 million investment by Mitsui to get into the front end of the wheat supply. It's also building shuttle elevators at Conrad and Culbertson, both in Montana, to complement one it already has near Pompey's Pillar, west of Billings, Mont.
A Japanese conglomerate, Mitsui, is building a shuttle elevator in this nearly abandoned outpost in Adams County to get down and local with one of its most important imports.
The elevator will be in service for the 2013 harvest. It will give locals a new direction and a third option for selling grain in the region. It will allow Mitsui — doing business as its subsidiary United Grain Corp. — to bypass the middleman and buy its own hard red spring wheat and other grains direct from the farm.
The Bucyrus elevator is Japan’s first entree into southwestern North Dakota’s wheat market, but not its first statewide. Another Japanese corporation, Marubeni, either owns outright or partially owns seven elevators all east and north of the Missouri River.