By Trish Svoboda
Images courtesy of Golden Waves Grain
An Origination Wheat Mill and Bakery in the works for Northwest Kansas will take advantage of the region’s abundant wheat production. The facility will be located in the Industrial Park next to Goodland, KS. By processing the wheat close to where it’s grown, the project will streamline the supply chain, reduce transportation costs, and boost efficiency, creating more value for farmers, the mill, and the bakery. Brian Linin, co-project founder, said the project will take wheat straight from the farm to the bakery, bypassing the traditional supply chain.
The idea was sparked years ago while Golden Wave’s Grain founder, Alan Townsend, was touring their newly upgraded cleaning facility in Sharon Springs, KS, with Dave Owen and Tony Adams. Townsend was questioned about what they do with their wheat. After speaking with Linin, then serving on the Kansas Wheat Commission and U.S. Wheat Board, they saw potential for a project. “Kansas is the wheat state,” he said, “yet we don’t have a signature flour mill.”
The project originally began as a flour milling project, but quickly pivoted to include baking, realizing value-added returns are much higher in bread production. Farmers who buy into the cooperative-style operation will supply wheat and receive dividends. The plant is expected to create around 140 jobs, mostly on the bakery side.
Beyond financial benefits, Linin believes the long-term impact is transformative. “This is a foundational food product,” he said. “When you think about long-term, this is a business that would be around forever. The flour milling and baking industry is over 100 years old in the US and people are never going to stop eating bread.”
The project offers traceability from farm to loaf, delivering fresh, Kansas-made bread to regional stores. “We’re going to have fresher bread on the shelf. We’re going to know where it came from. We’re going to know which loaves have which bread from which farms, possibly down to the quarter or the 80 acres of ground,” said Linin.
If successful, Linin says the model could be replicated across the state in places like Sumner, Scott, and Finney counties. “There can be small mill and bakery facilities just like what we’re going to build here that can supply other regions of the state or the country. We can just keep repeating this project in other areas to provide bread, throughout the country. All it takes is investors and people with a will to get it done. We’ve designed the project so that it can be expanded that way,” he said.
The founders include Linin, Alan Townsend, Tony Adams, Dave Owen, and the Mosbarger family. The team plans to have major fundraising completed in the next two to three months.
