Cereal Plant Expansion

CLIENT
Quaker Oats Company

The renovation and expansion project in St. Joseph, Missouri is one of three cereal plant projects executed for Quaker Oats by Ibberson between 1989 and 1991.

Ibberson performed design, engineering and construction management on the plant upgrade, including design of a new ingredient batching tower and conversion of warehouse space into process space.

Quaker Oats’ strategy was to produce and roll out a new flaked cereal product that required enrobing of ingredients. Their goal was to be the first breakfast cereal producer to introduce the new flaked cereal to consumers. Ibberson was chosen to handle the project because of our long-standing relationship with Quaker Oats in other industries and because of the experience and knowledge of minor ingredient handling. A key part of the project was the conversion from using small bags of minor ingredients, to using large, one-ton totes.

Another expertise vital to this project was familiarity with large-volume batch mixers of approximately 10,000-pound capacities. Although mixers of this size are uncommon in the food industry, our background in related industries where they are standard proved to be invaluable to the design and engineering efforts.