International Grain Science Flour Mill

CLIENT
Kansas State University

Ibberson was contacted by Buhler, Inc. of Minneapolis to construct a slipformed flour mill for Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. This state-of-the-art flour mill would be used for training milling students around the world. Through past successful projects with Buhler, we became the primary contractor for this project. Buhler, Inc. is a milling equipment supplier and process designer based in Switzerland with an office in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This new five-story, 73-foot-high flour mill is in the new Grain Science area of Kansas State University. Our challenge was to design a flour mill with a classroom-friendly atmosphere. This mill became larger than a typical flour mill to allow room for students and teachers on each floor. The mill has over 26,000 square feet of floor area and contains over 2,800 cubic yards of concrete.

The 15-inch-thick exterior slipformed walls have three inches of insulation cast into the middle of the walls. This method provided an insulated building with no visual signs of the insulation and did not require any type of exterior cladding. The five 5,100-square-foot floors and roof are supported by precast beams that were set and cast into the walls of the mill during the slipforming process. This procedure helped gain valuable schedule, time and labor savings. This procedure also eliminated visible wall to beam connections.

Throughout the design phase and into the 14 months of construction, we worked closely with Buhler and K-State on all details of the project. Most of the milling equipment was donated by various suppliers, and the remainder was provided by Buhler. Although Ibberson was not responsible for soliciting the donations, we were responsible for the complete installation of all processing equipment.