CHS Evansville Soybean Processing Plant, Wisconsin

CHS’s soybean processing plant near Evansville, Wisconsin, would be the state’s first soybean crush facility, and at about $700 million it’s one of the bigger ag-processing jobs in the Upper Midwest. The farmer-owned cooperative held a ceremonial groundbreaking on Oct. 7, 2026, with Gov. Tony Evers and USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden on hand.

Ceremonial is the right word. CHS’s own Oct. 7 release says construction will start once required permits are in hand, and the co-op hasn’t named a contractor or engineer. That reads differently from its Sept. 14 announcement, which said work would begin “in the coming weeks” and targeted completion in fall 2028. A CHS executive has since told local farm press he expects the plant running by the end of 2028.

Project Scope

The plant is sized to crush about 80 million bushels a year, or roughly 234,000 bushels a day, turning out about 1 billion pounds of soybean oil and 2 million tons of meal annually. CHS puts construction at 24 to 30 months, with an average of 250 contractors and laborers on site and up to 400 at peak. About 80 permanent jobs follow.

The logistics package is the bigger site-work story. CHS’s project page describes an in-plant loop track with three separate loops tied into Union Pacific, truck receiving rated at 40 trucks an hour and up to 1,000 a day, and meal loadout at 17 trucks an hour.

Brian Schouvieller, a CHS senior vice president, told The Farm that about 42% of the meal will stay local by truck. The rest goes to the Gulf by barge or rail, and some oil moves by UP to the co-op’s refinery in Mankato, Minnesota. CHS bought the land about three years ago and shelved the project for a couple of years before reviving it.

Why It Matters

Wisconsin grows soybeans but ships them elsewhere to be crushed. Schouvieller called the state a “soybean crush deficit” location. CHS says Evansville will raise its soybean processing capacity by more than two-thirds over the roughly 119 million bushels its Fairmont and Mankato plants handle today.

The demand case leans on renewable diesel. Schouvieller pointed to this summer’s EPA renewable volume obligations as a driver for soybean oil, and CHS says the oil will feed renewable fuels and its Mankato refinery. That’s a policy-dependent market, and this project has already sat on the shelf once. For Midwest industrial contractors, the open questions are who gets the construction contract and how fast the permits clear.

Project Team & Details