VALDOSTA — Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) came to Valdosta in 1987 when the company bought a soybean processing facility from Goldkist.

“The usage of soy bean meal in the area as far as the poultry industry, that’s what brought ADM to Valdosta,” said Chris Geswein, commercial manager with ADM. “It’s a destination market for vegetable protein meal.”

Through the next few decades, ADM grew and developed its Valdosta location.

It stayed focused on soybean processing until 1995, when it added a refinery for vegetable oil as well as a packaging and bottling facility which is a joint venture with ACH Foods, a Britain-based food company.

From there, ADM added cotton seed processing in 1997 and a trucking facility in the 1990s.

Located on 145 acres and employing around 265 people, ADM’s Valdosta location focuses on five areas: soybeans, cottonseeds, oil refining, oil packaging and blending and ADM trucking operations.

When soybeans come in, they’re cracked and then flaked to increase surface area.

With that done, the soybeans are put through an extraction process that separates the oil from the meaty protein.

At this point, different parts of the soybean are sent to different places.

The high-fiber hulls left over from the cracking are used in feed for cattle.

The soybean meal is used as feed for chickens, with most of it going to poultry farms in a 150 mile radius of Valdosta.

That crude vegetable oil, darker and cloudier than what ends up on store shelves, is put through a refining process to filter out water, dissolved solids and fatty acids.

Ending with a spinning centrifuge, the oil is then packaged and shipped out.

Making cottonseed oil is a similar process, albeit one that starts completely different.

When cottonseeds arrive at the plant, they are still covered in short, downy cotton fibers.

Seeds are delinted with a cotton gin to strip them of the last shreds of cotton.

The lint is gathered together, with some of it sold overseas and turned into bemberg fabric, used for suit jacket linings among other things.

The rest of it is sent to ADM’s Southern Cellulose Plant where it is broken down into cellulose.

The seeds are put through an extraction process, with the resulting crude oil put through a refining process.

The hulls and meal from cottonseed are used mostly for cattle feed.

ADM refines other oils at the facility that are shipped in, including palm oil and peanut oil, and blends oils together for certain customer specifications.

Stuart Taylor is a reporter for the Valdosta Daily Times.