Unverferth Manufacturing Announces Shell Rock Expansion

Nov 24, 2022

Unverferth Manufacturing Co. Inc. has announced that its Shell Rock, Iowa, facility has nearly completed a 75,000-square-foot plant expansion.
Unverferth Manufacturing Co. Inc. has announced that its Shell Rock, Iowa facility has nearly completed a 75,000-square-foot plant expansion.

This will mark the facility’s 12th expansion since 1988 and an additional 65 job openings for welders, painters, robotic operators, machine operators, and general assemblers. “This is an exciting time for Unverferth and the communities surrounding Shell Rock,” said Larry Unverferth, president for the company. “We often say, ‘Employees are not numbers at Unverferth; they’re family,’ and we mean it. There’s no better feeling than creating high-quality jobs right here in the heartland. We’re proud to support American manufacturing and look forward to welcoming more people into our new facility and the Unverferth family.” With the expansion comes a number of upgrades and modernization, including:

Overhead lifts to provide added safety for manufacturing larger parts and components.State-of-the-art LED lighting to provide enhanced visibility while reducing energy requirements.Robotic part-sorting off the laser tables.
Fiber lasers for making high-quality parts with precision.Manufacturing wages start at $23 an hour and second-shift employees receive a $2 per hour shift premium. For more information visit the link

Source : Farm Equipment

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators