ROSENORT, Man. – If a new piece of farm equipment pays for itself within two years, you can be pretty sure it is a wise investment.
Last year, in an attempt to avoid big nitrogen price hikes, a lot of farmers made that investment, buying new fertilizer tanks to allow early delivery of their 2008 fertilizer.
Some recouped just about all their money before it was time to put the fertilizer in the ground, as did Murray Seidler of Lumsden, Sask.
“I bought a 30,000 gallon fibreglass tank last winter for about $31,000. And I saved $25,000 over the winter by taking early delivery on liquid N,” he said.
Read Also
VIDEO: Green Lightning and Nytro Ag win sustainability innovation award
Nytro Ag Corp and Green Lightning recieved an innovation award at Ag in Motion 2025 for the Green Lightning Nitrogen Machine, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form.
“So I paid off nearly the entire tank investment just by having the tank full through the winter months. It’s amazing.
“I just took delivery (Aug. 13) on a second 30,000 gallon fibreglass tank and we’re waiting for another three 10,000 gallon tanks to arrive any day now. Nitrogen goes into the fibreglass and other fertilizer goes into the poly.”
Kleven MacDougall figures the break even point on his new tanks will be about two years. In April 2007, he installed two 30,000 gallon tanks and one 10,000 gallon tank. By the time he built his dikes around the tanks and installed the necessary plumbing, the bill came to $90,000.
“You can say tanks are a good investment. We’ve made money by buying them,” said McDougall, who farms 3,700 acres at Langbank, Sask.
“We saved a lot of money on the upswing in fertilizer prices. It went from $280 to $440 a tonne in the spring. On 350 tonnes, that’s a lot of money.”
However, MacDougall said new tanks are not entirely a happy story.
“Now we’re having to store two years of fertilizer before we even get the crop off. But if we don’t buy tanks and we don’t take early delivery, then we pay the higher prices in the spring.
“So, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars at risk. We’ve already bought our fertilizer for 2009 and it’s coming in a week or two. That’s a lot of risk. One bad crop and we’d be done farming.
“The problem is that we’ve been forced into this situation. The fertilizer dealers won’t store it. The companies keep wanting earlier payment and earlier delivery to reduce their risk, but all that does is increase our risk.”
Farmers who are considering a similar investment have several options.
Stainless steel
A 50,900 gallon capacity is the largest stainless steel tank built by Novid Inc.
Owned by fertilizer dealer Rosenort Agro of Rosenort, the company sells about 70 stainless tanks a year.
“We never really intended to build tanks for sale. It just turned out that way,” said Novid manager Brent Friesen.
“They (Rosenort) found that the mild steel tanks they were buying for liquid weren’t lasting very long, so they decided to build some stainless steel tanks to use here in the yard. Next thing they knew, a farmer down the road wanted one. Then another and another. So now Novid is a stand-alone business. All we do is build stainless steel tanks.”
Everything on a Novid tank is T304 stainless steel, which is rolled at the Novid plant. Stainless 316L is optional. Although welding stainless is generally considered to be more complex than welding mild steel, Friesen said it wasn’t difficult for his welders to master the specialty.
“It’s a matter of knowing you have to handle everything differently. Once you have all the correct technology, it’s similar to regular welding.”
The bottom of each tank has a welded-in four-inch suction coupling and a welded-in three-inch recirculation coupling. Instead of sight glasses installed in the side of the wall, Novid tanks have an external, clear plastic tube.
The 14-foot diameter tanks can be as tall as 35 feet and hold up to 34,000 Imperial gallons. The smallest tank is 15,000 gallons.
The 16-foot diameter tanks reach heights of 40 feet and hold up to 50,900 gallons. A tank this size weighs 14,000 pounds empty and 600,000 full.
Friesen said one advantage of stainless is that it requires no paint, special coatings, baking or special manufacturing chambers. An acid bath to clean the welds and the surface is all that’s needed before a new tank is loaded onto a flatbed. As with most other types, every Novid tank is pressure tested before shipping.
Friesen doesn’t think it’s likely a stainless steel tank will depreciate like a pick-up truck.
“We say a 30 year plus useable lifespan. Ten years from now, if you want to get out of liquid, your stainless steel tanks will still be worth something. We think it should be close to what you paid originally,” he said.
“Most people don’t realize that stainless steel is price competitive. Right now, we’re selling tanks for $1.04 per Imperial gallon. If you amortize that over 30 years, it’s very inexpensive storage.”
Powder coat mild steel
The story of mild steel, hopper bottom fertilizer bins is the story of watching paint dry. But in this case, it dries quickly.
“There’s nothing new about hopper bottom steel bins. The bins themselves have been around for decades,” said Don Heinrichs, sales manager for Vidir Bins in Morris Man.
“But to make them last with granular fertilizer, you need epoxy powder coat paint, inside and out, baked at 405 F for an hour. The whole bin goes in the oven. If you can’t achieve that quality of paint, a steel bin with granular fertilizer can corrode and be put out of commission in five to seven years.”
Vidir Bins has been in business for five years, building feed, grain and granular fertilizer bins with capacities of 493 to 4,870 bushels. The bins are characterized by their steep 45 degree cone bottoms.
Heinrichs said the company’s pickle and oil treatment begins at the steel mill. As the steel comes off the roll press, it runs through a special oil bath before it goes on the coil. The oil keeps the atmosphere from touching the steel until Vidir workers are ready to unroll each length.
“We don’t do any extra cutting or welding and we never unroll more steel than we need at the moment,” Heinrichs said.
“The decoiler machine only unwraps the right length for one complete circle around the bin. Once that circle is welded in place and the seam is welded up, we decoil another piece for the next circle.”
Bins use a variety of steel types. On the largest bins, the cone is 11 gauge, the three lower sheets are 12 gauge and the top two sheets are 14 gauge.
Pickle and oil also creates less weld spattering so workers don’t have to do as much grinding and cleaning.
Heinrichs said cleanliness is the key to keeping paint on steel, regardless of paint type.
“Unless all your surfaces are perfectly clean, powder coating and heat won’t do anything for you. Cleaning is 90 percent of a good, long-lasting paint job.”
Vidir starts with an acid wash, followed by phosphatizing, to etch the metal for better paint adhesion. The next step is a rust preventive polymer seal, followed by the 250 F drying oven.
Finally, electrostatic powder paint is applied. The exterior receives an ultraviolet-stabilized, polyester paint and the inside receives food and fertilizer grade epoxy. The inside epoxy is partially triggered by a chemical hardener, similar to what is used in wet epoxy paint, and partially triggered by the one hour oven at 405 F.
“An extra advantage of powder coating is that one hour after it’s cooled, the paint curing process is equivalent to wet paint epoxy curing for six months,” Heinrichs said.
A producer who is certain the bin will be used for grain only, and never for granular fertilizer, can save about $1,000 by ordering a lower paint grade for the inside. However, Heinrichs cautioned that the lower grade paint will not stand up to abrasives.
Heinrichs said nobody knows how long a powder coated fertilizer bin will last.
“We think it might wear as quickly as seven or 10 years with a lot of usage, but we can’t be sure. We’ve only been in this business for five years,” he said.
“The powder coat industry is still relatively new. We surmise, based on what the paint experts tell us, that we might get 10 or 15 or maybe even 20 years from each bin, but nobody knows yet.”
He said that once a powder coated bin starts to chip, it’s economically feasible to repaint the damaged areas with conventional wet paint epoxy. However, it will not last as long as the heat activated powder coat.
“The other option once a bin gets chipped is to simply convert it into a hopper bottom grain bin. There’s always a need for another hopper bottom bin in the yard. And it should last 70 or 80 years as a grain bin.”
Vidir has no plans to make a liquid fertilizer kit.
The 4,870 bushel Vidir Bin with the high-grade powder coat epoxy sells for $15,000, which works out to about $3 per bu.
Fibreglass
Polywest sold its first two fibreglass fertilizer tanks in the Deloraine, Man., area 30 years ago, and sales director Tim MacGregor said they are still in service today, showing no sign of heading toward the scrap heap.
“Some of the earliest fibreglass tanks now have 35 plus years, and we still have no idea how many more years they’ll last,” MacGregor said.
“Not everyone realizes that fibreglass tanks are engineered and built to not break down. Fibreglass tanks are made to hold some of the ugliest chemicals in the world.”
He said chemical tanks are built differently than boats, canoes, RV parts and septic tanks, which are laid up in the mould, either by spray chop fibreglass or hand laid with fibreglass fabric or roving.
Chemical tanks for industry and agriculture use a process called chop-hoop filament-wound, in which a giant rotating thimble forms the inner shape of the tank.
As the smooth male mandrel turns, six or more strands of polyethylene fibre wrap themselves tightly around the thimble, all coming from different angles and directions.
The cords overlap, cross each other and run at different angles to create a strong container. At the same time, chemical agents such as the gel coat, UV inhibitors, resins, glues, hardeners and pigments are sprayed on the fibres.
“It’s like building a steel-belted radial tire,” MacGregor said.
“The wrapping of the cords gives you a very strong product. Thickness of the fibreglass ranges from three quarters of an inch to and inch and a half, so it’s rigid. The important thing is that there are no welds or seams or joints in a fibreglass tank. Those are the points where a tank usually fails. There is no point where there’s a human touch on a fibreglass tank.”
MacGregor said the most popular tank is 42,000 U.S. gallons, the company’s largest size. It also sells a lot of 30,000 and 21,000 gallon tanks.
At a cost of $1.05 per U.S. gallon, fibreglass costs about the same as stainless steel. MacGregor said resale value is excellent.
The tanks are built in South Dakota.
Polyethylene
Polywest also sells polyethylene tanks, which MacGregor said costs less. Price per U.S. gallon is 50 to 85 cents, depending on the quality and specifications of the tank.
The lower cost should be a clue that poly can’t do all the things fibreglass can.
“We don’t even try to compare poly and fibreglass because they’re so different. Poly is in a category by itself. It has its own niche,” he said.
“Farmers often buy poly for secondary storage. They buy a 30,000 fibreglass tank for nitrogen and a 10,000 gallon poly tank for sulfur. That’s a very common combination.
“But poly has a more limited lifespan. Most go 12 to 20 years. A few of the heavier, thicker poly tanks last up to 30 years. But even with the UV inhibitors in the poly, the sun eventually gets to them and they become brittle. They lose their strength. Plus liquid fertilizer isn’t conducive to making any material last forever.”
MacGregor said the polyethylene tanks he sells are made in Winnipeg using a process called roto-mould. Unlike the fibreglass process, in which the mould is inside the new tank and the material is applied to the outside, roto-mould uses a giant spinning die mould with the polyethylene applied to the inside.
The raw resin beads are poured into the die mould as it begins to spin. The chamber is heated to melt the beads. As the mould spins faster, centrifugal force sends the molten beads out to the wall of the mould.
The outer shape of the new tank is created by the inner shape of the female mould. Once the material cools, the two halves of the mould are separated and the tank is ready.
Polywest sells polyethylene tanks up to 10,000 gallons in capacity.
MacGregor said roto-mould technology available in North America allows for poly tanks only up to 15,000 gallons because the big spinning die mould is a limiting factor. New technology in Europe now allows for 30,000 gallon poly tanks.
The poly is 100 percent recycleable, he added.
