The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
by Michael Rodeffer, The Quill
It has been many years since La Harpe has seen a large pile of corn on the ground in town.
This year with storage filling up fast after another good harvest yield coming in from the fields, the La Harpe Elevator, owned by Roquette, decided to make an outside pile of corn to allow more bushels to be delivered from customers.
This allowed the elevator to stay open and continue to accept corn.
The La Harpe facility can store about 715,000 bushels of corn in their bins Roquette also owns a facility in Blandinsville which holds about 900,000 bushels of corn.
Most of the corn at these two facilities is shipped by rail for processing to Roquette's Keokuk plant in Iowa. Rail cars are regularly filled at La Harpe and Blandinsville and transported to Keokuk, IA.
Roquette's Keokuk facility is a wet milling corn processing plant. At Keokuk, the corn is processed into corn syrup, animal feed, dietary sweeteners, pharmaceutical products plus other by-products of corn.
ABOUT ROQUETTE
Roquette is a French-based family owned company which produces more than 650 by-products from the starch extracted from corn, wheat, potatoes and peas.
Founded and headquartered in Lestrem, France in 1933 by the brothers Dominique and Germain Roquette, Roquette has grown to become the leader in starch production in Europe and the number four ranked producer of starch worldwide.
It is owned by over 200 family shareholders from the 2nd to the 5th generation-a family owned Group serving customers globally.
Roquette is a leader in specialty food ingredients and pharmaceutical excipients. According to their website, Roquette is a global leader in plant-based ingredients and a pioneer of new vegetal proteins.
In collaboration with its customers and partners, the Group addresses current and future societal challenges by unlocking the potential of nature to offer the best ingredients for food, nutrition and health markets.
Each of these ingredients responds to unique and essential needs and they enable healthier lifestyles.
Thanks to a constant drive for innovation and a long-term vision, the Group is committed to improving the well being of millions of people all over the world while taking care of resources and territories.
Roquette currently operates in over 100 countries, has a turnover of around 3.3 billion euros (3.73 billion U.S. dollars) and employs 8400 people world-wide.
Roquette has 20 production sites throughout the world, including 2 in the United States with one in Keokuk, IA and one in Gurnee, IL.
LA HARPE ELEVATOR PAST HARVESTS
Corn Piles in 1964 and 1975
Back in 1964, Bob Jones, owner of La Harpe Feed & Grain had filled up all of his storage at the La Harpe Elevator and asked the La Harpe City Council about putting grain on one of the blacktop streets in town. The council obliged and Jones piled corn on the street south of the city park.
Jones had reported to "The Quill" back in 1964 that he had hoped the spoilage and loss from the temporary storage in the street would run no more than 1%, a liability he had to assume for himself.
According to a 1964 article from "The Quill," many farmers seeking to save 5% to 10% of corn lost in picking by conventional harvesting, (picking corn in the ear) are now picking and shelling in a single operation. (by combine)
This makes the corn market-bound virtually all at once, and exerts a tremendous new demand on commercial marketing and storage establishments not felt before.
Also, the single harvest operation means only one handling for the farmer, now seeing the need ever more clearly to operate as economically and efficiently as possible.
The market price on the new corn (back in 1964) remained around $1.03 to $1.04 level...
Also in 1975, under different ownership, the La Harpe Feed & Grain Elevator had piled corn on the south side of the La Harpe City park.
OVERFLOW HARVEST CREATES CORN PILE AT LA HARPE ELEVATOR
At Roquette's La Harpe Elevator, a grain auger is busy dumping corn from a farmer's grain truck into the large corn pile which was placed on a concrete-like pad. It was created especially for this purpose and to keep elevators open and harvest flowing as farmers rush to finish.
Roquette's La Harpe employees above from left are: Richard "Rich" Boyer, Mark Pettit, Mike Falk, La Harpe Elevator Manager, Jared Byers and Mark Guzman (Other employees at La Harpe who are not shown are Sharon Hocker and Joe Smith.)