Advanta Announces State-of-the-Art Updates at Processing and Distribution Facility in Hereford, Texas

Facility improvements enable Advanta/Alta Seeds to ensure high-quality seed, apply seed treatments in-house and flexibility to prioritize grower needs.

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In the past two years, Advanta/Alta Seeds launched igrowth® herbicide-tolerant grain and forage sorghum and EMPYR® Premier Forages, revolutionizing the sorghum industry with new technology. This new facility will allow the company to apply Vertix® seed treatments on igrowth® and EMPYR® Premier Forage hybrids in-house and to process and bag seed in flexible batches to meet specific grower demands. Seed processed through the facility will be shipped to customers in the U.S. and internationally.

“Our lines are set up from a capacity standpoint where we can process and bag seed for several situations and customer types. If a customer wants a large run of bags, we can easily do that. But we now have the flexibility for customers who need smaller runs of seed. For example, if they decide to switch to grain sorghum from corn in a replant situation, we can process an additional couple hundred bags of seed at a time,” says Rusty Bevel, ADVANTA director of sales.

“From a distribution standpoint, with the different levels of capacity and processing capabilities, we can meet the demand of both big and small operations. It’s important to us to meet customer needs by providing the seed quantities they want,” Bevel adds.

The multi-million-dollar investment includes 100,000 square feet of additional warehouse space, multiple seed lines and other equipment enhancements. As seed arrives at the facility, it goes through a rigorous testing process to ensure it meets the company’s exacting quality standards before it is put on the processing schedule.

“This investment enables us to provide the industry-leading seed technologies that Alta Seeds and ADVANTA are known for — igrowth, EMPYR, Aphix™ elite sugarcane aphid tolerance and more,” Bevel says. “Our products have significantly raised the bar in the industry for quality and performance. These state-of-the-art enhancements enable us to consistently provide our best-in-class offerings. We’re incredibly proud to bring this level of investment to sorghum producers and support our community with additional job creation.”

About Alta Seeds

Alta Seeds is a premium seed brand of Advanta US, an operating unit of global seed company Advanta Seeds and a division of UPL. Alta Seeds provides farmers with high-quality hybrids of grain sorghum and sorghum for forage bred from the proprietary genetics of Advanta Seeds. The company with a diverse and active R&D pipeline, Alta Seeds is the most-focused team in providing premium genetics and technology specific to the sorghum industry, such as Aphix sugarcane aphid tolerance and EMPYR premier forages.

About Advanta Seeds

A global seed business with operations on six continents and sales in 40 countries, Advanta Seeds combines proprietary crop genetics and plant breeding capabilities with biotechnology to produce high- quality seed products and solutions for its customers around the world. Advanta is a member of the UPL group of companies.