Larchwood, Iowa — The former Elanco/Novartis/Grand Labs facility west of Larchwood has been purchased and a unique business is now operating from there.
Farmers Business Network, or “FBN,” will hold a Grand Opening Event this Thursday for their Larchwood Logistics Center, a critical logistics hub for ag input deliveries to farmers in South Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota. FBN has a major office in Sioux Falls. The Larchwood Center serves farmers within a 200-mi radius of the facility.
They say that the Larchwood Logistics Center is part of a unique digital shopping and delivery service for farmers.
They tell us the Larchwood Logistics Center is a key part of FBN’s investment in agriculture’s first modern logistics network, designed by FBN’s head of logistics Jack Cox (formerly a logistics leader at Amazon), and unprecedented in the ag sector.
FBN says their logistics network enables farmers to shop online for thousands of products, with price transparency, which are then delivered to the farm when they need them. FBN says this is a major innovation for farmers and unique in agriculture.
FBN tells us their logistics centers are designed to move goods across North America quickly–as opposed to traditional warehouse systems that are vulnerable to shortages. They say that played a major role in FBN’s ability to maintain supplies of critical ag inputs this year, when many traditional suppliers announced shortages.
The FBN Larchwood Logistics Center is located at 1447 140th Street, west of Larchwood. The plant opened as Grand Labs in 1979. In 2003 it was purchased by Novartis. Elanco bought it in 2015, and in 2018, it was sold to Vos Biotech.
