Expanding North Dakota Flour Mill Will Be Biggest In US

Bismarck, N.D. • North Dakota's state-owned flour mill, which has stood for nearly a century as a symbol of the state's socialist past, is coming off a record year and is poised to become the largest wheat-grinding facility in the nation, its chief executive said Thursday.

General manager Vance Taylor told the state Industrial Commission that a $27 million expansion of the Grand Forks facility is underway and should be completed next summer. The mill produces about 3.8 million pounds of flour daily, and the expansion will bump production by 30 percent, he said.

"An increase in demand from our current customers is what is driving this," Taylor told reporters.

Taylor said the Grand Forks mill, the only such state-owned operation in the nation, currently grinds about the same amount of wheat as a Nabisco facility in Toledo, Ohio. The expansion would make the North Dakota mill the largest single milling site in the nation, he said.

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