Staff photo by Fritz Busch The boards of directors of Central Region Cooperative (CRC) of Sleepy Eye and United Farmers Cooperative of Winthrop announced April 10 that their members approved a plan to merge the two companies. Pictured above is the CRC office, grain and feed bins.

WINTHROP — In order to take advantage of overlapping territories and common investment needs, the boards of directors of Central Region Cooperative (CRC) of Sleepy Eye and United Farmers Cooperative (UFC) of Winthrop announced April 10 that their members approved a plan to merge the two companies.

The cooperatives entered a merger study in early February to identify operational, economic and strategic benefits of a merger.

“Our cooperatives have been discussing benefits of this partnership for some time,” said CRC Chairman Larry Dean.

“We’ve seen great success with the Agronomy Solution Partners (ASP) joint venture and know there are more efficiencies to be gained by working together as one organization. We look forward to building an existing geographical and operational synergies to be well positioned to serve our members now and in the future in a very competitive and rapidly changing agricultural environment,” said Dean.

“Because we have overlapping territories and common investment needs, the merger will help us protect and efficiently use members’ equity as we make strategic investments for the future as one cooperative instead of each cooperative making the same investments on the same fixed assets and rolling stock,” said UFC Board Chairman Jeff Mandersheid.

Headquartered in Winthrop, UFC provides its member-owners and customers with agronomy products and services, energy and fuel, feed, precision agriculture, parts, shop services, and equipment sales. UFC operates 13 locations with 150 full-time employees in south central Minnesota.

Mitch Altermatt, UFC Chief Executive Officer is moving on. He was selected Crystal Valley Cooperative’s new CEO April 11. He will begin his new role April 28, following the retirement of long-time CEO Roger Kienholz.

Based in Sleepy Eye, CRC is a full-service, member-owned cooperative with five core business units: agronomy, energy, grain, feed and BCA products (an ice melt and lawn fertilizer packaging business). CRC operates 12 south central Minnesota locations with 170 full-time employees.