By Jayci Cave

PCCA’s mission is simple – To ensure the long-term profitability of our grower-owners through value added marketing programs and through services to their gins. In accordance with this mission, year after year PCCA’s Warehouse Division works hard to provide exceptional service to the cooperative’s grower-owners. With multiple warehouse locations in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, each year comes with unique challenges, and the PCCA warehouse team continues to face them head on.

“This year was very challenging as we dealt with situations regarding warehouse capacity, rolling stock and personnel,” said Jay Cowart, Vice President of Warehousing.

For the 2017-18 crop year, they are expecting to handle almost 2.2 million bales, breaking the previous record of 1,745,000 bales. Prior to this crop year, the PCCA Altus warehouse location constructed a new shipping facility to help increase the e ciency of warehouse operations.

“Outbound transportation is and has been very difficult, so the added efficiency and space were invaluable,” Cowart said. “While the goal of this expansion was not increased capacity, it did free up about 35,000 bales of capacity. This will aid in getting cotton shipped timely and efficiently which will benefit grower-owners both in increased value of their cotton and lowered operating expenses for their warehouse.”

Kevin Brinkley, PCCA President and CEO, is proud of this new addition and how it will impact PCCA’s grower-owners.

“Hundreds of thousands of bales that we have in storage sheds will be brought into this staging and sorting facility by specific bale number and organized into lots for shipment,” Brinkley said. “We can load out about six trucks at one time here which means we can get this cotton to market more quickly and more efficiently and that is done so we can preserve as much value as possible from this crop.”

Cowart said the warehouse team is already looking at and preparing for next year’s crop even as they finish up the current one.

“Our Oklahoma and Kansas regions plan to increase cotton acres significantly once again which will tax our warehouse capacity, rolling stock and personnel,” Cowart said. “We have plans to expand the capacity at our Liberal, Kansas, warehouse by 35,000 bales. We continue to study the logistics of cotton moving into and out of our facilities and, in turn, look for practices and technology that will assist us in being more efficient in this endeavor. PCCA understands the value in shipping cotton timely and efficiently, which both add value to their cotton.”