Northwest Indiana dairy farm see environmental benefits from new $80M facility
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Washington-based Sedron Technologies is nearing completion of an $80 million facility at Curtis Creek Dairy in northwest Indiana that can convert cow manure into clean water, fertilizers and other products that can be reused by the farm.
Construction on the facility began in 2022, and the company is adding nearly 40 manufacturing jobs that are slated to be filled by the end of the year.
Stanley Janicki, chief commercial officer of Sedron, said the process will create an economic impact on the farm that the company hopes will serve as a “nationwide revolution in agricultural waste management.”
“It takes the digestate–the manure that goes through the dairy digester–and instead of going into the lagoon or onto the fields, it takes that digestate and goes into our technology,” Janicki said. “From there, we’ll produce clean, gorgeous water that we can discharge back to the farm…[as well as] two different types of dry, solid organic fertilizer, and then a liquid organic fertilizer.”
The 50,000-square-foot Sedron facility utilizes the company’s proprietary Varcor system, which is designed to efficiently distill the manure into clean water for cows, dry solids that can be used as bedding or soil amendments, and concentrated liquid, organic nitrogen fertilizer.
Sedron says the process enables a farm to become a zero-discharge dairy operation.
Curtis Creek Dairy is part of Fair Oaks Farms in Jasper County. Janicki said incorporating the Varcor system allows the farm to focus on its agronomic practices of applying nutrients precisely when they’re needed rather than simply applying dairy manure because it’s there.
“This farm is a very environmentally friendly farm, but it gives them a new tool in how they manage their fields,” he said. “It also allows them to grow different types of crops that have different nutrient profiles. It also enables them to switch to no-till farming, which helps sequester carbon into the soil. And one last major benefit for the farm is they won’t have a dairy lagoon anymore and the odor and the methane and ammonia emissions from that.”
From Sedron’s perspective, Janicki said the process allows the company to make unique organic fertilizers that it can sell into organic markets at a premium and help lower costs for organic consumers.
“And the last thing, from a societal standpoint, we are producing a large fertilizer plant and manufacturing-style jobs. They’re regional, high-paying jobs.”
The facility began ramping up operations in April and already has about 25 employees in Fair Oaks. Mackenzie Reider, chief people officer at Sedron, said the company is still in active recruiting mode for positions such as industrial maintenance technicians, industrial equipment operators, process operators and lab analysts.
Reider said while the company is looking for people with highly technical backgrounds, finding employees who can fit into the company’s culture is also key.
“We are very innovative company. We wear a lot of hats. We are always working on new things and trying to improve our current processes,” she said. “So finding people that that fit that bill is very important to us, and we try to be very selective and hire really great people that fit into our company culture.”
Sedron has another, smaller facility at Natural Prairie Dairy in nearby Lake Village that has been in operation for a few years. Janicki said the company has learned a lot on how to improve operations on the technical side, which is being applied to the new facility, but more so around staffing.
“How do we train a crew of local operators to run the site? How do we attract that talent? How do we bring them on and then retain them for the duration of the project?,” he said. “When you develop something new, there’s not a school to go do that. You have to have these training programs. You have to bring people in, train them up with the company, and then they wear multiple hats, and then they train other people. It’s this wonderful, fun, collaborative culture that we built out at Natural Prairie, and are bringing to Curtis Creek.”
Janicki said Sedron is already talking to other dairy and swine farms across the state about incorporating the technology on their operations, though no official plans are in place at this time.