CHS to close Twin Ports largest grain elevator, all 504 concrete silos

DULUTH – The Twin Ports’ oldest and largest grain elevator, which holds up to 70% of this region’s total grain volume, will close at the end of August, a CHS Inc. spokesperson confirmed Friday morning.

CHS said 25 jobs, mostly union positions, will be eliminated, although two workers will stay longer to complete the shutdown.

The company built the grain facility at 41 Dock St. in Superior, Wis., in 1936. It has 504 concrete silos and 15 steel tanks, and can hold 18 million bushels, according to CHS.

Times have changed in the grain transport industry, said John Griffith, the Inver Grove Heights-based company’s senior vice president of global grain marketing.

“There’s not critical mass of grain flowing through the Port of Superior, or our facility in particular, that supports the facility,” he said Friday afternoon.

Griffith said there are more efficient and less expensive ways to transport grain. Shuttle trains of 10 cars can carry grain to deep-water facilities that can accommodate ships larger than those that travel through the locks of the Great Lakes.

The Duluth Seaway Port Authority called the closure a “disappointing blow to the Port of Duluth-Superior.”

The port authority said it would work with the city of Superior to find a further use of the grain elevator.

Griffith said CHS has not decided what to do with the facility, but a sale of the property wasn’t off the table. In fact, he said, someone inquired earlier Friday about whether it was for sale.

It’s not unprecedented for a shuttered grain elevator to change hands. In 2022, Hansen-Muller Co. bought a former General Mills grain elevator on the north end of Rice’s Point. The facility had not been used since the mid-2010s.

CHS had the Daisy Elevator and Grain Elevator M complex in Superior for about 20 years before adding Elevator A, which gave it access to the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Grain shipments peaked in the 1970s but have dipped over the decades. In 1978, more than 10 million net tons of grain left the port, but by 2024, shipments fell to just more than 800,000 net tons.

At the time, the port authority’s then-executive director described grain as a “dynamic commodity.”

“And the port faced a number of headwinds in 2022, including two years of tightening grain supplies worldwide, further exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, a very strong dollar, extremely elevated transportation costs and competition from other countries’ less expensive wheat,” Deb DeLuca said at the time.

Superior Mayor Jim Paine said the city learned of CHS’ plans to close the terminal on Thursday.

“This is not a huge surprise to anybody,” Paine said. “The shipment of grain has been falling precipitously over the years.

“From a local economic standing point, we’ve diversified our economy effectively: Grain is still moving, it’s just not being shipped as much.”

“It’s almost 90 years of the facility in the company,” Griffith said. “It’s a wonderful facility, a great port. It’s now time. Things have changed enough in the world and the movement of grain flow.”