Ardent Mills talks shutdown plans in meeting with Mankato

The company shutting down a historic Mankato mill said they are looking into holding job fairs for employees and working with the city to preserve a massive mural.

Ardent Mills, which will shut down its facility in Mankato in mid-January, met on Dec. 2 with Mankato city officials and the commerce group Greater Mankato Growth.

“It is our goal to preserve and uphold the wishes of the community members and leaders, while recognizing our role is shifting in the future direction of the property itself,” Kelley Kaiser, a spokeswoman for the Denver-based company, said on Wednesday.

The company is looking into job fairs and helping its 44 employees find new jobs within or outside Ardent Mills, Kaiser said.

Ardent Mills has said it is working with the city to map out what will happen to the gigantic mural of dancing Native American children painted on the property’s 135-foot-tall grain silos.

The historical building known as Mill A has also been discussed as in need of protection, Jessica Potter, director of the Blue Earth County Historical Society, said Wednesday.

The mill in Mankato dates back to 1878, when it began milling wheat into flour using grindstones, according to a history on the Ardent Mills website.

The first telephone in Blue Earth County was installed in the mill in early 1880, linking the plant to Mankato’s City Hall, the website said. The mill also helped Mankato residents in 1908 when it shared clean water from its private wells during a typhoid epidemic.

The company has said it is closing its Mankato mill because of difficult market conditions “driven by excess capacity in this market and declining regional volume.”

Ardent Mills saw its sales decrease last year, reflecting industry trends, according to a recent financial statement from Conagra, which has a 44% ownership interest in the company.

The company closed four flour mills, one of which was in Minnesota, in 2019. A joint venture of Cargill, Conagra and CHS Inc., Ardent Mills has about 40 locations in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.