Corporate Backgrounder

The changing nature of agriculture in the Upper Great Plains – with major growth coming in more specialized products and the explosive growth of the ethanol business – has highlighted the increasing role transportation costs play in preventing producer access to key, potentially valuable markets. Farmer and processor access to efficient intermodal container transportation is a critical element of reducing these costs. North Star Rail Intermodal LLC was founded to meet this need.

Today farmers, processors and ethanol producers must truck their products to the Minneapolis/St. Paul intermodal “hub,” where it must be transloaded into containers to gain access to international markets. North Star essentially extends the hub to communities throughout western Minnesota and eastern North and South Dakota, providing a substantial reduction in shipping costs, and a potential boost to local economies.

North Star is offering farmers, processors and ethanol producers an intermodal (truck and train) service that will allow them to plug into the international container shipping system right at the farm, the elevator or the ethanol plant. Product can be loaded into containers at the North Star terminal from either hopper trucks or railcars, or can directly be loaded into containers at the elevator or processing plant. Once loaded, containers can be shifted to rail, without the need for lengthy highway transport, keeping the products in the containers they were originally loaded into until they reach their ultimate destination.

The North Star service, available since early 2007, enables shippers to:

• Move large amounts of DDGS (Distiller’s Dried Grains with Solubles) in containers, rather than in traditional hopper cars. Containers carrying this byproduct of ethanol production, a feed for cattle, hogs and poultry, are much easier to unload and clean, dramatically reducing the transport cost.
  
• Sell identity-preserved (IP) grains and grain products. By moving from the farm or elevator in containers and not being aggregated with other products, these grains and grain products can retain their unique pedigree – of type, nutritional or chemical characteristics, and growing methods – and their higher market values.
  
• Sell other value-added agriproducts. High-quality produce of various sorts can be sold at higher prices if it is not mixed in with other, lesser grades in transport, but rather is shipped in containers.