Message from the CEO
Thank you for taking the time to read through our May customer newsletter and related company insights. The cooperative is built on seven core principles, which allows for each member to work together fairly and equitably. This business model creates the opportunity for more buying power and the ability to offer products and services at a competitive rate and should help each member be more financially successful. Despite a challenging year dealing with supply chain, logistics, and inflation issues, your cooperative is well-positioned financially into 2023.
Enhancing the Cooperative
Your cooperative continues to re-invest for our customers' present and future needs. This type of re-invest adds value to our core divisions, agronomy, grain, feed, and energy, through operational efficiencies and go-to-market strategies. United Cooperative can only provide these upgrades to our producers in your local communities because of your confidence and support given to us as a trusted partner.
Each of our core divisions saw unit increases and captured efficiencies to provide a good return on our investment. Because of the profitable returns generated, United Cooperative continues to enhance our facilities and we’ve completed many building projects this past year. We finished construction projects in Reedsburg, South Beaver Dam, Shawano, and Fall River. We have started the five new projects listed below:
- Waupun - New feed mill construction facility will hold about 8,500 tons of feed ingredients along with 40,000 sq ft of warehouse storage and a new 2.8-million-bushel grain terminal. Operational summer of 2024.
- Center Valley – A 8,100 dry fertilizer Agronomy facility and 3.7-million-bushel grain storage facility. Spring 2024
- Boscobel – 1-million-bushel Load out storage and tracks to load 110-car unit trains. Summer of 2023
- Deerfield - Dry fertilizer plant expansion. Fall of 2023.
- South Beaver Dam – Expansion of the liquid fertilizer plant. Fall of 2023.
Enhancing Wisconsin Communities & People
United Cooperative takes pride in giving back to our local communities and helps advance many non-profit organizations’ initiatives throughout the year. The cooperative’s focus is to target groups representing our core values and impacting the rural communities we serve. Those targets include rural health and safety, youth education, and food pantries. Total giving to these three worthy causes reached over $85,000 in 2022. In 2022, 50 high school and college students were awarded a $1,000 United Cooperative scholarship, bringing the total number supported through this program to over 500 since the program was first implemented in 2008. Over the last three years, United Cooperative has given over $300,000 to our local communities through our stewardship programs.
Enhancing and Returning Value to our Members
Revenues for 2022 were 1.46 billion. United Cooperative’s core agronomy, grain, feed, and energy businesses generated $65.8 million in profits. The investment United Cooperative made in ethanol contributed $42.8 million in net income in 2022. Patronage from regional cooperatives was $5.8 million. All combined, United Cooperative had a total net margin before taxes in 2022 of $114.4 million.
United Cooperative is returning $63.6 million in total patronage to members with those financial numbers. Fifty percent of this patronage, or $31.8 million, will be distributed in cash to our member-owners in May, while 50 percent, or $31.8 million, will be retained in equity credits. In addition, we plan to revolve stock in October, retire stock at age 77, and pay all estates as requested.
Enhancing our Brand Promise
United Cooperative’s promise to you (our members) is to build upon our past success, re-invest in future capabilities, and create a positive customer experience while growing profits for our members and the cooperative. As we achieve this promise, we know our members will be able to “Rely on Us.” “Rely on Us” is more than a slogan; it’s a foundational principle for high-quality, dependable products and services, backed by up-to-date, efficient equipment and facilities, delivered by trusted advisors and employees willing to serve you.
Thank you for your patronage in 2022, and we look forward to an exciting and prosperous year in 2023.
Cooperatively yours,
David Cramer
President and Chief Executive Officer
