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CROOKSTON MANUFACTURING WEEK TOURS: SUNOPTA

Continuing with the Crookston Manufacturing Tours sponsored by the Crookston Area Chamber and Crookston Housing and Economic Development Authority is the visit of SunOpta.  The facility which was originally Dahlgren & Company when founded in 1955 was acquired by SunOpta in 2010.  In Crookston, SunOpta manufactures bird food and roasts sunflowers, soybeans, and chickpeas.

Mike Winger, Director of Operations, said the Crookston Facility is primarily a sunflower processing facility. “SunOpta is a sunflower processing facility,” said Winger.  “We are a farm to table process. We will bring in raw sunflowers, size and clean.  We use some of it for packaging raw products, the other half we will use for our roasting facility.  We do have a roasting facility capable of roasting in-shell and kernel.  We also have two separate lines where we have capabilities of roasting chickpea and soy.”

SunOpta uses over 5,000 growers for their product primarily ranging from the central Dakota’s south to Kansas with their product shipped around the world.  Although they roast three products, Winger said sunflower processing is the highest volume product in the facility.  “The most volume we are moving is sunflower,” said Winger.  “We staff about 115 people, and of that, about 80 are in the roasting facility alone. And we contract with the growers on specific sunflower varieties to supply our need for production.”

SunOpta’s contracts change yearly, but Winger did say some processed products have overseas contracts because American Sunflower varieties are larger than those grown in other countries. 

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