Betty Jo Gigot, Editor and Publisher

When the powers that be decided on Hereford’s forte and future, they meant what they said. On our third visit to the Texas Panhandle community since 2004, we find the businesses we previously featured [Aug./Sept. 2004, Oct./Nov. 2005] are going great guns and have been joined by a myriad of new companies moving into the area. In fact, the city recently received the Texas Economic Development Council Community award for their success in community development in the field of agriculture.

New to the area
Growing a community requires great leaders and Hereford’s got ‘em. Hereford Mayor Bob Josserand, longtime cattle industry leader, is serving his eighth, two-year term (he always says each will be his last). Don “Coach” Cumpton retired as executive director of the Hereford Economic Development Corp., and was replaced by Sheila Martin-Quirk, a native of Panhandle, Texas. Martin-Quirk worked in the grain trading business for a number of years before going to work for the State of Texas in business development and promotion. Clearly she brings a lot of necessary skills to the job.

According to Martin-Quirk, one of the latest businesses drawn to Hereford is Microgy, which is working with two local dairies using anaerobic digesters to produce biogas that can be pumped into pipelines. The company will employ 10 Hereford residents.

Across town, century-old Standard Nutrition is using an existing facility to install a new pre-mix plant to create dairy feed. The Nebraska-based company is ramping up for production and is in the process of hiring nutritionists.

Gold Standard Labs got its start in Hereford. The rapidly growing company offers BVD-PI testing for feedyards, stockers and dairies across the High Plains.

Tul’s Cattle Company, owned and operated by a well-known dairy family, is just breaking ground on a new calf ranch east of Hereford. They plan to start with 10,000 head and eventually expand to 30,000 head. With a projected one-person-per-250-head employment rate, the facility will add another major employment opportunity to the area.

And another dairy has set up its own laundry facilities in an old feed store. Dairying makes for a lot of dirty laundry and right now they’re their only customer. Eventually they plan to offer their services to other area dairies.

Business is booming
The area’s massive cattle feeding industry has always been Hereford’s mainstay, and in spite of major adjust- ments in ration prices brought on by the developing ethanol industry, that industry continues to pump dollars into the community. Feedyard managers and nutritionists are assessing potential opportunities for the massive influx of wet distiller’s grains expected from the burgeoning ethanol business.

While facing higher corn prices, expensive forage and lower milk prices, Hereford’s dairy business has exploded over the past three years, bringing in more than 45,000 dairy cows.

Whether you look at the feedyard business, dairying or ethanol production, it’s all been good for Hereford.

“These new businesses have made an impact on the community,” Martin-Quirk said. “They are players and are giving relief to the people who have supported the community all these years.”

Higher education flourishes
The Hereford Branch of Amarillo College will graduate its first students this year, and enrollment keeps on growing so much so that classes must be held in churches, the community center and the high school to accommodate everyone.

Martin-Quirk is working with the college, the Texas Cattle Feeder’s Association and local dairy groups to develop training courses for the agriculture work force. And one local company is providing classes in conversational English for Hispanics.

The downside
Growth has its costs and Hereford is no exception. New housing construction is struggling to keep up, and increasing demands on infrastructure have caused Mayor Josserand some sleepless nights. The new ethanol plants’ corn usage and resulting ethanol distribution will increase the number of trains through town from 95 to 130 per day. Coming up with funding for general highway construction and upkeep and new schools to support his community’s rapid growth has kept Josserand busy. But those are nice problems for a small, rural community that is determined to hold its own in an evermore-urbanized world.

Ethanol Plant Construction Forges Ahead

Billed as a first-of-its-kind facility and the largest biomass-fueled ethanol plant in the United States, Panda Ethanol’s Hereford, Texas, plant is projected for completion in the fourth quarter of 2007. The facility will utilize 1 billion pounds of readily available cattle manure from Hereford-area feedlots per year.

According to Bill Pentak, Panda Ethanol’s director of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations, the plant will produce 105 million gallons of ethanol per year and is the first of six projects on Panda’s drawing board.

The plant will also produce 2,518 tons of wet distiller’s grain with solubles (WDGS) per day, which will be used in rations in area feedyards.

Kurt Landis is in charge of placement of the WDGS produced at Panda. “We don’t call the product a by-product,” Landis stated. “It is a co-product.”

Landis stressed that the two products from the plant, ethanol and WDGS, are equally important and that the process and quality of both will be instrumental in the project’s economic success.

The company will employee 61 people, primarily from the Hereford area, and, as an additional boost for the city, has arranged for a pre-employment training program in conjunction with Amarillo College on the Hereford campus.

Construction on Schedule for White Energy

“The plant is 40 percent complete and on schedule,” said Jeff See, vice president of Construction and Development for White Energy. See was referring to White’s 100-million-gallon-per-year ethanol plant at the edge of Hereford, Texas. White Energy considers Hereford an ideal choice for the plant because of its location and the fact that Hereford is the “Cattle Capital of the World.”

The area’s booming feedyard and dairy businesses provide a built-in market for distiller’s grain, the primary byproduct of the ethanol production process. According to See, the White plant will produce wet distiller’s grain, modified distiller’s grain (50 percent) and dry distiller’s grain using the facility’s two dryers.

Byproducts will be marketed exclusively by local businessman Dane Noyce through Quality Distiller’s Grain, and trucked by Noyce’s Panhandle Express Company.

“We will have over 90 loads of wet distiller’s grain per day,” Noyce said, noting much is under contract already.

Projected for completion in the forth quarter of 2007, the plant’s grain supply will be stored in an existing 9.5 million bushel grain elevator owned and operated by Archer Daniels Midland located adjacent to the plant.

Although it’s estimated that the White plant will contribute $100 million to the local economy, it’s already had a positive impact on Hereford’s economy, employing 350 at the construction site. Once complete, the plant will have positions for 40 fulltime employees.

White Energy currently operates a 50-million-gallon-per-year ethanol plant in Russell, Kan., and is building a mirror image of the Hereford plant in Plainview, Texas, which is slated for completion in early 2008.

Keeping Up With the Times

“It was built in the early 1960s and remodeled several times,” said Bob Josserand of his Hereford Feed Yards mill, whose loading area clamshell doors are a dead giveaway to the mill’s age. Josserand and his family own the 50,000-head capacity yard just east of Hereford, Texas, along with AzTx Cattle Co., also at Hereford.

Within the next few months the old mill, one of the community’s major landmarks for over 50 years, will be gone, replaced by a state-of-the-art batch mill built by local millwright Top of Texas, and using rolls from local supplier, Ferrell Ross. Lextron provided software for the mill along with a bunk-reading program.

Josserand’s primary goal in erecting the new facility was to be able to efficiently add wet distiller’s grain to his rations. The new mill’s increased efficiency has already saved money. Electricity costs have been slashed by 60 percent and labor-saving features have cut staffing from five to two fulltime and one part-time employee. And truck drivers can load their trucks, from their truck, without any help. The mill also sports a reverse osmosis water system and a hay barn that will hold six semi-loads of ground hay.

The company had built a new mill at Dimmitt last year and insists their new technology works well.

The mill went up in six months and has two of everything, which enables the milling operation to be run from computerized panels in the mill office or at the flakers. Showing his age just a bit, Josserand also had a manual panel installed, just in case.

The Latest

Here’s an update on the companies we have previously featured in our Hereford series.

• Ferrell-Ross has outgrown their facility, twice, and has now purchased the land next door. With over 100 employees, David Ibach, president and CEO, is ecstatic about his company’s success since its move to Hereford in 2004.
• Terry Caviness is planning a massive upgrade at Caviness Packing Co., as another part of his 25-year plan.
• Garth Merrick’s Merrick Pet Foods has grown extensively, constructing massive warehouses in the area.
• Top Of Texas has moved to new facilities north of the city in part to have space for their Sweet Brand fleet.
• Kirk and Ceciley Sehi at Texas Feed Fat continue to prosper, even in the face of competing demand for fat as a fuel energy source.