BROWNSON, Neb. — Farmers across western Nebraska and surrounding regions now have 24/7 access to high-quality liquid fertilizer with the opening of a state-of-the-art facility by Adams Industries and Simplot Grower Solutions. The facility, located northwest of Sidney in Brownson, represents a long-term partnership between the two companies and brings new flexibility and efficiency to the agricultural industry in western Nebraska, northern Colorado and eastern Wyoming.

The $20 million facility, the only one of its kind until Hastings, Neb., features real-time fertilizer mixing, rapid distribution capabilities and has created 10 new jobs at Adams and three new jobs at Simplot, with additional jobs expected to be added. With three loading bays, the site can load up to 18 semi-tractor-trailers per hour.

“Once they purchase a load of fertilizer from Simplot, they get a load number they can enter at the kiosk outside,” Tim Craig, Chief Operating Officer at Adams Industries, said. “The door automatically opens, they’ll come in, and it closes behind the semi. The driver preps the top of the trailer, opens the lid and inserts the hose. After entering their load number, truck number and driver ID, they can load a full semi in just about eight minutes. We’re running about 650 gallons per minute.”

The facility's strategic location provides a significant logistical advantage, as it has direct access to both Union Pacific and BNSF railroads.

“There was a need to bring in unit trains of fertilizer to a facility like this,” Craig said. “Simplot has always been a great partner of Adams. It’s been fun to see this project come to life and get to the point where we’re ready to rock and roll.”

The site boasts 8 million gallons of storage, including twelve 30,000-gallon tanks for starter fertilizers and twelve 6,500-gallon tanks for micronutrient injections. The facility can create a custom batch of fertilizer every eight minutes.

The facility also features advanced rail unloading capabilities. Adams Industries and Simplot expect to unload full unit trains—110 cars—into their storage tanks in about 20 hours.

“We’ll scale all the cars when they come in and get a weight on them,” Craig explained. “Our transload specialists will vent the cars and then hook up hoses to unload the product into storage tanks. We’re unloading 10 cars in 90 minutes.”

Safety is a top priority at the new facility. Adams Industries designed the site to minimize risks for workers handling the transloading process.

“At a traditional facility, transload specialists have to climb up and down each car twice—once to vent it and once to close the lid,” Craig said. “Here, we’ve circumvented that. They can access the tops of 20 cars at once using a single staircase, eliminating hundreds of climbs and making the process safer and more efficient.”

Adams Industries and Simplot Grower Solutions held a grand opening celebration and open house at the new facility on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025 at the site on Cheyenne County Road 99, just north of the old Cabela’s Distribution Center. The event featured a ribbon-cutting, facility tours, complimentary hamburgers and hot dogs and a live broadcast by 987 The Big Boy.