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North End I-15 | The Black guy (last name)is the manager -buyer for the Montana Malt Company (can't remember the name , CRS syndrome :>) ) malt house in Gt.Falls . ( A South African company)He was elevator manager @ Cut Bank and Sweet Grass Mt. for years. Prior to that he was Manager for Peavy elevator in Shelby , Mt. The Gt.Falls malt house is 25 cents under most other bids. Long haul , not cost effective.
Coors decided it was too costly to buy and ship malt from this area . We are held captive by BNSF and freight is higher here than most any other point in the US . BN's main line runs through Shelby Mt. yet it is cheaper to ship unit trains from the mid west through Shelby to west coast than from Shelby. No one has explained that one yet other than there is rail competition in other states .
Malt barely is grown primarily in the northern tier states . We are fortunate to have the climate and soils that consistently produce top quality malt barley .
We were the only dry land producers in the Coors system . All their barley is now grown on irrigated lands.
We are currently growing on a trial basis for Molson out of Canada . Coors /Molson
combined 2 years ago . This year the Coors folks negotiated a deal with Canada Malt Co. the Canadian wheat board and Molsons for malt barley grown here . It's half of what we were growing before but price is good . We have to pay the freight to Calgary so it is not as sweet as once was . Still better than open market malt price .We have also sold to Cargill in Spiritwood , again the freight kills us . We get $ 1.50 per hundred weight less than from Coors . | |
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Coors Top Grower
