DENVER —Ardent Mills, LLC is closing its flour mill in Mankato, Minn. Operations at the facility are expected to begin winding down shortly with milling to stop completely by mid-January, according to Ardent Mills.
The Mankato mill, located about 80 miles southwest of the Twin Cities, is the smallest of the three mills Ardent Mills operates in Minnesota. The company’s other mills in the state are in Hastings, just southeast of Minneapolis, with 26,760 cwts of daily milling capacity; and Lake City, a little farther southeast, with 16,000. The Mankato Mill has 9,900 cwts of daily milling capacity.
Calling the closing a “tough decision,” an Ardent Mills spokesperson cited difficult market conditions as the primary reason for the closing.
The mill’s origins date back to the late 1870s, when Hubbard Milling Co. was established in Mankato. Cargill acquired the business in 1989 and still owned it when Ardent Mills was created in 2014. The flour mill has 44 employees. Ardent Mills said team members will be offered the opportunity to relocate to other Ardent Mills facilities when possible.
While much smaller than the Hastings mill, the Mankato facility features two milling units and produces an array of flour types milled from hard and soft wheat grown in Minnesota and the Dakotas, as well as Kansas, Oregon and even Canada. Ardent Mills said customers who bought flour shipped from Mankato will be supplied by other of the company’s mills.
With the closing, Ardent Mills will have daily flour milling capacity totaling 500,610 cwts at 31 US mills, according to data gathered for the soon-to-be published 2025 Grain & Milling Annual published by Sosland Publishing Co.
The decision to close the Mankato mill comes 19 months after Ardent Mills said it wasclosing a flour mill in Port Allen, La. In addition to Mankato and Port Allen, Ardent Mills has closed five other flour mills in recent years in Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Nebraska. A sixth closed mill, in Tampa, Fla., was replaced with a new mill. Earlier this year Ardent Mills said it wasexpanding its flour mill in Commerce City, Colo.,adding 9,500 cwts of daily capacity there.