Wyffels Hybrids is expanding its footprint westward with a new facility that opened in late summer near Ames, Iowa. It now serves as a warehouse and distribution center, with future plans to include research and production components, and a customer and company meeting site.

“It’s an ideal spot to focus on our western unit business,” says Steve Woodall, Iowa site manager for Wyffels Hybrids. “It gives us great access to transportation, since we are right at the intersection of Interstate 35 and [U.S.] Highway 30. We're also 10 minutes from Iowa State [University] and its Seed Science Center.”

Eventually, the site will be akin to the Wyffels Hybrids production, warehouse and research site near Atkinson in northwestern Illinois.

“Over the last six years, we've invested heavily in our Atkinson facility, doubling capacity and bringing it up to [producing] more than 1 million units [bags] per year” says Adam Ploog, western business manager for Wyffels Hybrids. “Over time, we’ll make that same investment in Iowa to continue serving our customers across the central Corn Belt.”

A decade of growth

Wyffels Hybrids expanded from Illinois, eastern Iowa and southern Wisconsin into the rest of Iowa, southern Minnesota and southeastern South Dakota about a decade ago.

CUSTOMER CONTACT: The Iowa facility will enable Wyffels Hybrids to bring more of its customers in for meetings and tours, company officials say.

“Our focus has been to intensify focus on this region, which has some of the most productive corn acres in the country,” says Jacob Wyffels, vice president of production for Wyffels Hybrids. “It’s helped us have 10 consecutive years of growth, nearly tripling our business during this time and approaching 10% [central Corn Belt] market share.”

“We’ve had growth everywhere in our footprint, making significant progress on corn acres west of the Mississippi River,” Ploog adds.

In building the Ames site, Wyffels Hybrids can better serve customers in Iowa, Minnesota and parts of South Dakota, he adds.

The firm has around 70 replicated plot research sites in Illinois, Iowa, southern Minnesota, southeastern South Dakota and southern Wisconsin, Wyffels says.  “This [Ames] facility further enables hybrid research across the entire Wyffels footprint,” he adds.

The site will also help Wyffels Hybrids make further improvements in how it works with its customers to place products with relative maturities ranging from 93 RM to 118 RM, Ploog says.

“There was a time years ago where we had a couple really good hybrids in an area. But if you got outside of that maturity zone or outside of a certain trait group, we struggled to put packages together on a farm,” Ploog says. “As we’ve tripled our business, we have been able to work with growers to form a [hybrid] package that fits their needs.”

The facility will also enable the firm to bring in more customers in its western region. “Every time we bring customers in, they find more value in the product,” Ploog says. “They can see how the whole process works.”

“Having a second site gives us geographic diversity for production as well,” Wyffels adds. It enables the company to spread production risk should weather maladies occur in a certain area, he says.

Solely corn

Unlike many other seed companies, Wyffels Hybrids solely sells seed corn.

 “When we show up on farms, farmers know we are the corn experts,” Wyffels says. “We don’t sell 10 other products. All our operations — from research to production to agronomy to sales — are focused on one product to make our farmer-customers successful.”

Wyffels Hybrids will also continue to focus on the non-GMO market.

“We are the second largest non-GMO seed provider in the country,” Wyffels says. “Our customers have had lots of success with it, with many taking non-GMO grain to the [Mississippi] River market for a premium. In areas such as northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota, our customers use it as part of their crop rotation.”

Independent status

“As we continue to grow, we'll continue to evaluate more expansion, moving more to the West, North and even to the East as potential opportunities,” says Wyffels.

In the meantime, though, Wyffels says the firm will intensify its focus on its current sales region of Illinois, Iowa, southern Minnesota, southeastern South Dakota and southern Wisconsin.

The new site also enables Wyffels Hybrids to stress its status as an independent seed company, company officials say. Since the company sells seed corn alone, its research division can more fairly evaluate accompanying products such as herbicides, fungicides and insecticides, Wyffels says.

“We are proud to have made the decision to remain an independent family-owned brand,” he adds. “We don't have stockholders to answer to. That allows us to act differently than almost anybody else in the seed industry. We can take a long-term view and make sure the decisions we make are in the best interest of the farmer.”