Lane Segerstrom, CEO of Corn Board Manufacturing, Inc., said the plant will be built just two miles west of Odebolt on Highway 175.

The location, to Segerstrom, was a no-brainer when it came to choosing a location.

“There is lots of corn there, that is the first box we wanted to check,” he said.

But there is also a personal attachment to the area.

-Submitted photo
Corn board is used to make the Stalk It brand of skis, snowboards and surfboards. Stalk It is a brand subsidiary of Corn Board Manufacturing, Inc.

“I grew up in Ida Grove and we still have two farms in the family. This is kind of full circle,” he said. “I think we can contribute something to the community. I am really excited about that. Jobs in rural America, going to small towns — bringing back manufacturing and helping the farmers with an additional revenue stream. For me, I have been inventing 20-plus years taking products to the marketplace. This is probably the most exciting thing for me. It is full circle back to my roots.”

Segerstrom said Corn Board Manufacturing, Inc. is a Texas-based company. They have been developing the technology for using corn stover and making it into an environmentally-friendly wood alternative for the last 10 years.

“We have an R&D (research and development) facility in Stratford, Texas, which is up in the Panhandle. There are a few counties there with a large concentration of corn. We picked that area to be out of the limelight while we were figuring this out,” he said.

Segerstrom said they started developing pallets, furniture and other products, as well as skis, surfboards and snowboards under the company’s Stalk It brand over the last eight years at that facility.

“We have really tested it, pushed it to the limit,” said Segerstrom. “This helped us really discover and develop technology. We were really figuring out how to scale this and how do we duplicate the model and we are at that point now, putting our first full-size facility on the ground.”

-Submitted photo
Corn board is used to make the Stalk It brand of skis, snowboards and surfboards.

Segerstrom said they have been working with economic development in the Sac County area for quite some time.

“We have a group of people really excited about what we are doing,” he said.

“For more than a year we have been excited to work with Corn Board Manufacturing, Inc. on their new Sac County location,” said Brandy Ripley, executive director of Sac County Economic and Tourism Development. “This is an outstanding opportunity for not only Sac County, but also for our region and state.”

Segerstrom said the pallets made at the new facility will be part of a lease program. When a company is done using the pallets, they’re returned to the Corn Board Manufacturing facility where they are re-used again, broken down, recycled and re-made into another pallet.

Harvesting corn stover

-Submitted photo
Corn stover will be harvested and baled by employees of Corn Board Manufacturing.

“We use all of our own equipment. We ask the farmer to shut off the stalk chopper on their combine. We come in right behind them, create the windrow and bale that up in round bales and haul it off the field,” he said. “The farmer really doesn’t have to do much. We want to get in and get out and we cut them a check for every bale that we bale.”

Segerstrom said it is their mission to make the removal of corn stover easy on the farmer and a process that will ensure a quality product.

“We don’t want to have an inferior product,” he said. “Let’s say we contracted and some farmers went out, harvested and couldn’t get to the field right away and it rained on it, snowed on it — then they baled it up and bring us 500 bales — we can’t take them. That’s not going to go over very well. Their job is to get the corn out. We didn’t want the pressure on the farmer.”

Segerstrom said some producers may not want to invest in their own baling equipment; or they may not want a custom baler to come onto their land.

“We want the closest relationship with the farmer. We see them as partners in this whole thing,” he said.

Segerstrom said about 20% of the stover that is in the field will be harvested.

“We end up with the stalk, cob, husk and leaves, and we have a separating process that separates most of the stalk and cob out, so we are mainly using the husks and leaves that we mix with the binder and press into a structural board.”

Is harvesting corn stover environmentally friendly?

“I am a fifth generation farmer. I have a lot of history of taking care of our land. I am pretty sensitive about what we do on that land,” he said. “We use a very small portion of corn stover. I think the impact on erosion and wind is very minimal. The amount of nutrients we remove is also very minimal. Less than 11% of the bales we take away have stalk in them, which is most of the nutrients. Our process is to not clear the field by any means.”

Segerstrom feels the removal of the corn stover in that limited capacity could be beneficial.

“If you really start getting technical, data we’ve gotten on our own, is the microbial energy it takes to break down things like the cob could be actually utilized to help the soil better,” he said. “If you are no-till, removing some of that stover could actually be a really good thing — especially with corn on corn.”

Segerstrom said they are expecting to use a little more than 500,000 bales of corn stover each year, which is about two bales per acre.

“We are looking at about 25,000 acres that we will need to contract with farmers,” he said, adding those acres will most likely be within a 10-mile radius of the plant.

The facility is slated to produce about 5 million square feet of board a year.

“But we could expand and double production,” he said. “It could ultimately, with a second phase, do somewhere in the vicinity of 10 million square feet of board. That would require about 100,000 bales.”

Segerstrom said he is also expecting to bring on about 25 to 30 employees.

Plans are for groundbreaking to happen this spring.

“We are currently working on engineering, getting approvals. The equipment that is going in it, some is being custom manufactured,” he said. “We are planning for this fall, the third or fourth quarter, we should be operational.”

McMahon Associates Inc., an engineering and architectural firm is designing and overseeing the construction of the facility and is partnering with C.D. Smith who is providing the construction services.

From the field to the streets, slopes and surf

Corn stover is showing its usefulness

Whether you are hitting the slopes, riding waves or the asphalt, did you know you could be doing it using a product developed from a corn stalk?

Surfboards, skis, snowboards and skateboards are made using a ” wood” which is made of Corn Board, a green alternative for wood that is made of corn stover, otherwise known as the leaves and stalks from a corn harvest.

Stalk It, a brand subsidiary of Corn Board Manufacturing, Inc. which offers other “green” wood products, was developed, according to CEO Lane Segerstrom, as a way to test and develop the product Corn Board.

“We wanted to make it better and stronger,” he said. “We really just pushed it to the limit in the longboard skate boards and then started to develop skis and snowboards. We partnered with Never Summer out of Denver to do our finish-outs. We provide the core — that is our technology and then someone that understands the snowboards and skis manufacture them for us.”

Segerstrom said they have also partnered with Kazuma to help manufacture surfboards.

Stalk It

Stalk It’s reputation of quality and durability began in the early years of longboarding. Segerstrom said he began designing and building longboards in 2010.

“I thought how can I put Corn Board in something that shows it is a strong material? So, I built a skate board and went out and broke a Guinness Book of World Record for the fasted speed on a towed skateboard of 78.1 mph to really show its strength,” said Segerstrom. “When people saw that, they could see that you could make a chair or a piece of furniture.”

That particular skateboard is now in the Smithsonian American History Museum.

Segerstrom said for close to 10 years they have been building skateboards and decided to branch out and utilize the Corn Board technology into the world of surfing, skiing and snowboarding.

According to the Stalk It website, the end result of using the Corn Board technology makes them stand out in those industries with durable, high performance boards.

The skis, snowboards and surfboards are available in different locations, mainly smaller retail stores, or can also be found online.

Benefits of using corn stover

“Obviously we are environmentally making a friendlier product and our position is if you don’t have to cut down a tree, let’s not cut one down,” said Segerstrom. “I think we can engineer and make really competitive products in the marketplace and we have proved that. That is really what the Stalk It brand is about, making a really quality product.”

It has definitely been competitive.

Segerstrom said the Stalk It brand of longboards, skis, snowboards and surfboards have helped bring competitors at all levels to the podium.

“I think that says an awful lot,” he said. “When we started to make a ski, we made a park ski, and within 55 days of introducing that, we were on the podium in the first and second position with some junior skiers and then our snowboard, for the first year, our Big Mountain snowboard got seventh Junior Worlds in Europe. We went right into the competitive side right out of the box.”

Segerstrom said users are surprised and thrilled to be using a product that derives from corn.

“It has been something we have been excited about. It’s fun to see a kid’s face when they realize what’s in that material and they can go out and ski on it and skateboard on it,” he said. “They feel like they are doing something for the environment by consuming less and yet still having a great product.”

Corn Board

Corn Board has recently announced the construction of a pallet manufacturing facility in Sac County. Segerstrom feels the possibilities for the use of Corn Board is endless.

“It is an alternative to wood, it is competitive to wood and has some of the characteristics wood has, but brings features to materials — whether it be in sports equipment like skis, snowboards, skateboards, pallets and ultimately in building materials,” he said.