When the Bühler milling team first visited Siemer in 1960, they brought with them designs for new types of milling technologies. The two companies discussed replacing their existing equipment with Bühler’s new solutions. “That was really a turning point, maybe the decisive turning point in our business after having been around as millers for some 70 years,” Rick Siemer says. “My father realized this was an opportunity to get back into milling in a significant way.”

The commitment was made at that time to invest in a new mill in Teutopolis, with the highlight being Bühler’s new pneumatic roller mill, a picture of which graces the company’s timeline in the West Harrison office. In the nearly 70 years since, Siemer has added mills in Hopkinsville, Kentucky and West Harrison, Indiana – all equipped with the latest Bühler milling solutions available. “I say we are in business because we had the chance from a fairly early stage to work with Bühler,” Rick Siemer says.

This partnership has given Siemer the ability to serve their customers in a way that keeps them coming back. “We have fantastic customer relationships,” says Rick Siemer. “We love to say we have partnerships with our customers because those relationships are very, very important to us.”

Rick Siemer has extended the partnership to the company employees as well. The company is now 30.5 percent employee-owned. Up until 2000, the company had several shareholders who split ownership with the Siemer family. According to Rick Siemer, they were not active in the business and were understandably interested in monetizing their investment. In the past he had been excited about the possibility of an ESOP, or Employee Stock Ownership Plan, so after buying out his shareholders, he decided to institute one at Siemer Milling Company.

It is a partnership that makes a lot of sense for both the company and the employees. On the company side, Siemer Milling gets employees who care about the success of the company. “It’s not just a simple economic proposition,” explains Rick Siemer. “Because of this plan, they want to do a better job. The people around them want to do a better job. They encourage that sort of thinking.” And it’s not just the employees in the mill. The offer is also extended to people in the offices, including the employees in accounting and sales.
 

On the employees’ side, when the ESOP participant retires, they are invited to sell their shares back to Siemer. “And not one has passed up that opportunity,” says Rick Siemer. The shares are converted to cash, which makes the employees’ retirement a good deal more comfortable. “I’m very proud to be able to provide this kind of financial security to those people who have made the business successful, who have made it work,” he says.

Earlier this year Siemer commissioned a new B mill on the West Harrison site. Once again, Bühler brought in the latest milling technologies to serve Siemer’s needs, including new controls, weighing and dosing systems, the new SORTEX H optical sorter, and much more. The site’s A mill was built in 2015 and produces 600 tonnes of flour per day.

The new B mill adds another 150 tonnes of daily production. “The new mill was a demand from our customers,” says Sunil Maheshwari, Vice President at Siemer Milling. “Our sales group was looking for extra capacity. And we could see the future that is growing in Indiana and Ohio.”
 

The B mill also brought along an upgrade of the existing A mill from WinCos to the new Mercury control system. Now, the entire site is managed by the same ultramodern Mercury system. This new system, according to Maheshwari, makes running and staffing the mill easier. “The workforce in the milling industry is not as experienced as it was 20 or 30 years ago,” he says. “The younger generations like to work with computers. They want everything in their hand, on their tablets.” But he does not see this shift as a bad thing. In fact, it reminds him of when he first started at the West Harrison site in 2015, adapting to new tools and ways of working himself. “Every miller was hired from outside,” Maheshwari explains. “But they picked up the operational side of things very quickly because of the software. They are savvy about computer usage.”
 

Stefan Schneider, Bühler’s Key Account Manager for Siemer, can only agree. “It’s that mutual respect and drive for innovation and excellence. Siemer is a very forward-thinking company and working with them has been the highlight of my career,” Schneider explains. He sees parallels between the two family-owned companies that extend all the way down the respective corporate ladders. “We’re both very collaborative, open, and professional. I find them very understanding, with good, open discussions, and really great problem solvers. In the end, we’re able to work together to produce a product that we can all be proud of.”

Later this year, Rick Siemer will step down as president of Siemer, tapping his son, Henry, to take the helm. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous,” Henry Siemer says with an almost imperceptible smile. Indeed, his father has cast a very long shadow with regard to the company’s success. When Rick had first taken on a leadership role in the family business, Siemer Milling was still a relatively small business. Over the course of his tenure, the company has grown considerably.

But there is still a lot to be done. Not the least of which is growing and maintaining the partnerships that have been formed. With respect to their growers, whom Henry Siemer respects deeply, he sees opportunities to continue to promote programs for growing wheat in regions that are farther north. “We are partnering with scientists at the University of Illinois and the University of Kentucky.”

Siemer has invested heavily in these universities with million-dollar endowments. “They are pushing our understanding of wheat genetics, wheat breeding, and how to manage wheat crops in the field in order to get the best yield,” Henry Siemer says. “Each year we’re getting a few more acres north as advancements in our understanding of wheat breeding and wheat growing continues. We’re able to offer these participating farmers premium programs, paying them above already agreed upon prices if their wheat is presenting certain qualities that we find really desirable.”
 

And then there is Siemer’s ongoing commitment to sustainability. “For Siemer, sustainability is all about efficiency,” says Henry Siemer. “We are working with a bulk commodity crop, and we have a saying that good millers don’t throw anything away and they don’t give anything away.” Everything that comes into the Siemer mills gets used in some form. We clean off incidental material from the farm fields that we cannot use, and find someone that can get functional use out of it.”

Henry Siemer sees a clear path forward for Siemer. “It’s a bit like what we have seen already over the last 30 years,” he says. “Continued growth, investment with our farmers so that they will continue to provide us with a great wheat crop, partnerships with our customers so that they know they can rely on us, and so that we can provide services to them more efficiently and provide better value for both of us.”

So does this mean more of the same? Hardly. Progress is the name of the game. “We are going to be expanding our volume capacity,” says Henry Siemer. “And we are going to be looking into high-value opportunities with wheat flour. If that requires some additional process and new technology investment, we’ll give that a go. If it requires working in partnership with a third party, then that’s what we’ll do. What we’re looking for is to be innovative – to be the number one supplier of wheat-based solutions to our customers.”

This idea of steady, continued growth is one instilled by his father, Rick. He has overseen the company’s success by managing its growth responsibly – a concept that was reinforced for him at Bühler’s Networking Days in 2019.

“I was talking to a very successful miller from another country,” Rick Siemer says. “He had phenomenal success over a couple of decades. I asked him how he had been so successful. Without hesitation, he said: ‘Pace. Keep growing. Don’t grow too fast. Don’t get out ahead of yourself, but don’t stop.”

Rick feels like Siemer Milling could be growing faster, but clearly, the results speak for themselves. He sees flour milling as a business where there is going to continue to be opportunity, indefinitely. That does not mean it is growing or expanding dramatically. But there is opportunity in continuing to invest in people and in technology and in working hard to maintain the great relationships that have girded their success and growth so far.

As Henry Siemer carries the company forward, what lies in store for his father? Rick Siemer hopes his legacy is already in motion, seen most clearly in the transition of leadership to his son. Though he jokes that a family business can feel like a life sentence, he is far from ready to step away. “I’ll take a different position here, perhaps executive chairman, or something similar,” Rick Siemer says. “I find the business very interesting. I find it very fulfilling. I want to continue to be here. I want to be able to make my experience and my awareness of benefit to Henry and to the company. Maybe I’ll get involved in some special initiatives that don’t naturally fall into other people’s job descriptions.”

Rick Siemer could easily be mistaken for a strict pragmatist. But on the opening screen of Siemer Milling Company’s corporate video there is a quote from Socrates: “Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of wheat.” It is a poetic notion that carries a very practical message. How can you possibly lead a state if you have no knowledge of how people are fed?

Rick Siemer will be the first to tell you that he is not himself a miller. “I lead a flour milling business,” he says. But even here he is able to see the romance in Siemer’s place in feeding the people. “I guess I get emotional about it, to the very large extent to which, yes, through our company, our customers, and all these partnerships we are feeding people. We are a critical element in enabling people to have better lives because they have sufficient food. We are very, very proud to be a part of that aspect of human life and civilization.”