OMAHA — The Scoular Co. earlier this month upgraded two of its 14 western Iowa facilities, finishing construction on a new 1-million-bu grain storage bunker in Portsmouth and improving handling capacity at its Emerson grain handling site through the addition of a new belt conveyor to fill its flat storage building.

According to Scoular, both facilities will unload at 15,000 bus per hour, which is 7,000 to 9,000 bus per hour faster than older facilities in the region.

The new storage bunker in Portsmouth is expected to meet the needs of the company’s procurement program for area corn users and for Scoular’s train loading program in Hancock, Iowa.

"We are excited about being able to dump a lot of grain in a fairly short amount of time, especially during harvest when our customers have better things to do than sit in line," said Jay Schuster, general manager of Scoular’s western Iowa facilities.