The statistics for the new Richard W. Stegmann St. Louis Urea Center are pretty amazing.
Lange-Stegmann Director of Operations Rich Diffley says the facility has a capacity for 63,000 tons in 15 bins, ranging from 800 to 20,000 tons, which can be turned four times a month. “We can unload barges in approximately five hours, we can load truckloads in approximately six minutes and we can load a full rail car in approximately 17 minutes,” Rich says. “It allows us the ability to load a full unit train up to 80 rail cars within a 24 hour period.” That’s about a million tons a year, if you do the math.
Diffley explained that the fully automated system makes it the most efficient way to move large volumes of urea quickly and easily.
Diffley showed the media through the storage facility prior to the AGROTAIN International grand opening on Tuesday and impressed us with the mountains of urea in the bins. This photo shows the largest bin – at 20,000 tons – from above. It was maybe a third full and just looked like a pile of freshly plowed snow. Check out the photo album for more shots of the nation’s largest urea import terminal.
Listen to an interview with Rich Diffley here, conducted by myself and Tom Steever with Brownfield Network: agro-diffley.mp3
When 
Making that announcement, Lange-Stegmann president Mike Stegmann explained that five years ago he asked Allen to find a way for customers to make their SuperU product at their own locations. “After a little while, he came back and said ‘I don’t think there is a way, but I found something better’ and that something was the stabilized nitrogen center that you see here today,” Mike said. They made the decision to name the center after Allen because of his “commitment and dedication to the technology, the company and the industry as a whole.”
The brand new urea center in St. Louis received its official name at the grand opening ceremony on Tuesday – the Richard W. Stegmann St. Louis Urea Center.
The reason the plant was first located at the site near the Mississippi River was because it was next to the stockyards. “At that time a lot of livestock moved by rail and they had to unload it every 24 hours,” Rich explained. “People would come in with trucks and they would haul back fertilizer.” 
existing energy, transportation and environment segments. DTN has a large list of world class customers in the areas of downstream refined fuels, wind farms, grain producers, agribusinesses, biofuels producers, departments of transportation and aviation companies, among others.
It seemed like the ABN Show midday here at the Farm Science Review. The BARN has a nice barn. Here’s Andy and Lindsay just before their big announcement today.
Also on hand to commemorate the announcement was University of Ohio President, Dr. E. Gordon Gee. He said this was an exciting day for him since ABN Radio founder (deceased), Ed Johnson, was his friend and he knows that Ed would be proud of this announcement and to see Andy and Lindsay carry on his legacy.
Well here I am at the 
Another day, off to another farm show. After Cindy and I got in to St. Louis last night we re-grouped and re-packed. She’s going to be attending an event for Agrotain in St. Louis today while I’m on my way to Columbus, OH and the 
I like the way Fran Fischler, President of the IFAJ Congress 2008, started his remarks at the end of the event.
