Canola oil plant in works

Construction will begin on a $110 million canola oil plant later this month near Warden, an agricultural community east of Moses Lake.

The plant will be operated by Pacific Coast Canola LLC, a subsidiary of a Canadian company called Legumex Walker Inc.

Speculation regarding an oilseed processing plant outside Moses Lake has churned for years.

Plans call for the new facility to process 1,100 metric tons of canola per day. It will be the company’s first plant in the United States and will produce expeller-pressed canola oil for food products. The leftover material, called meal, can be used as livestock feed.

Joel Horn, president and chief executive officer of Legumex, said the company’s 10th such plant could help generate hundreds of millions of dollars of economic activity over the next decade.

That includes construction, the employment of several dozen people and income to regional farmers who grow canola.

It is anticipated that the plant will be built next year and operational in 2013. The groundbreaking ceremony will be held Sept. 21 in Warden.

The plant will be the only canola oil facility west of the Rocky Mountains, Horn said in a prepared statement.

Inland Northwest farmland is good for growing canola. Wheat farmers, for example, can grow canola as a rotation crop. It does not require irrigation. And Warden, which sits along Interstate 90, has rail service tying it to markets on the West Coast.

Legumex Walker operates in Canada where it buys, processes and sells what are called “pulse crops,” mostly legumes such as lentils, peas, beans and chickpeas. It also runs canola processing plants in the rich farmland of Saskatchewan and eastern Alberta.