STONEVILLE, Miss. - What do you do when you have millions of tons of cottonseed and no place to put them? This was the dilemma facing Danny Turnage, manager of Stoneville Pedigreed Seed, the largest cottonseed company in the region. For 10 years, Stoneville stored its seed in a cold-storage rental unit 60 miles away from its production facility. Another company bought the cold storage units in April 2004. Stoneville had to quickly find another seed storage site.
A major challenge for Turnage was to convert these 60- by 120-foot and 60- by 200-foot shells into climate-controlled storage environments. Without properly regulating the temperature and humidity, the stability of the seed would be lost, especially during a hot Mississippi summer.
Turnage decided to seek the help of Lee Gordon of Air Tech, a small contracting company in Greenville. Gordon realized that the scope of the project would require him to get others involved, so he turned to Bud Martin at C.C. Dickson Co., a wholesaler and Heatcraft Refrigeration Products' (HRP) Chandler Refrigeration distributor in Memphis, Tenn.