Shelf-stable milk and car seats may soon be shipped around the world from Seward.
The Seward City Council on June 3 approved the sale of two lots in the Seward Rail Campus to a company that will process shelf-stable milk for sale around the world, and another lot to a Colorado company that gathers and sells baby products.
The companies coming to Seward are significant individually.
DARI Processing, LLC, has international reach and experience in agricultural processing and marketing with leadership that is based in Nebraska.
Parker Baby brings home a Concordia University graduate and a Seward High School alum who developed a business based on their own needs as parents in Colorado.
But the transactions also mark a milestone for the Seward Rail Campus, which was created in 2018 to spur economic development in the area.
The campus runs from Walker Road south to Fletcher Road on the west side of Highway 15 in Seward.
The three parcels sold leave only a handful of smaller parcels available for sale around the first addition of the rail campus. The city has options to purchase the land to the west of the first addition to 294th Road for future development.
DARI Processing, LLC’s, property is the two large parcels mapped out on the west edge of the first addition. The Parker Baby property is south and east of DARI Processing LLC. Both areas will likely be annexed into the Seward city limits soon.
“The development of the rail campus has been with purpose,” City Administrator Greg Butcher told the city council on June 3 after the approval of purchase agreements with the two companies.
When a community develops an area like the rail campus, the companies they sell property to then have control over what happens next.
“You only get one chance,” Butcher told the council.
While all of Seward remains open for business, Butcher said the opportunity to add the companies that invested in the Rail Campus has given the city rare opportunities to recruit and attract good corporate neighbors in recent years.
Seward County Chamber and Development Partnership CEO and President Jonathan Jank said in a later interview that the current property owners and occupants in the Rail Campus are invited to be a part of recruiting other businesses, which allows potential buyers to see the complementary work going on.
The rail park is the only industrial park in Seward County, Jank said in a later interview, so city and SCCDP leaders have learned a lot as they developed and implemented plans, adjusting as new businesses came into the campus.
“It is the future
of dairy.”
DARI Processing LLC purchased Lots 16 and 17 for $986,129. It is owned by Todd Tuls, who also owns Tuls Dairy in Rising City.
He is a third-generation food processor and has brought in Adam Burton from New Zealand for his expertise in asceptic dairy processing.
Asceptic or shelf-stable dairy products are pasteurized and packaged to allow storage at room temperature without refrigeration. It is more common in Europe and other parts of the world and uses high temperature processing and sterile packaging techniques.
Tuls said it will likely be the only one of its kind with the ability to export milk to all over the world.
That will be tremendously important in the future, Tuls said, as the cost of refrigeration factors into food availability in shipping and at groceries.
The COVID epidemic brought attention to the dairy industry’s supply chain, as well as others, when millions of gallons of milk were dumped because food service industries shut down, shippers were stalled and milk soured.
In some places that left shelves empty.
“We had this dilemma that we had nowhere to go with the milk,” Tuls said.
He expects the Seward plant will eventually produce 1.8 million gallons of shelf-stable milk a day.
“It will take us a couple of years to work up to that,” Tuls said.
He has plans to eventually double the plant’s size.
“It is the future of dairy,” Tuls said.
This is a bigger project than others he has taken on, Tuls said, but noted that he has milked cows, fed cows, and developed projects on undeveloped land – called greenfield sites – in three states.
“This is a great opportunity for us,” Tuls said.
Tuls was accompanied by Adam Burton, who will be the project lead.
Burton, who grew up on a dairy farm in New Zealand and went to college in Australia, said he has worked with Ultra High Treatment milk production in the United States for the past 11 years.
He connected with Tuls two years ago. He will be joined by a process engineer from Ireland and an architectural designer.
Tuls told the council that Gov. Jim Pillen was a mentor to him years ago and he remembers him saying: “We have to continue to figure out how to add value to Nebraska agriculture.”
He expects Pillen may be in Seward on June 18 when DARI Processing breaks ground on the dairy processing plant.
Mayor Josh Eickmeier complimented the work taken to make this development possible.
“We are excited to welcome the Tuls family to Seward,” he said.
Eickmeier said the DARI plant will be the largest private investment project since Petsource by Scoular brought in a $50 million freeze-dried pet food ingredient manufacturing facility in 2020.
Butcher said he and Jank began almost weekly meetings with Tuls in 2023.
Butcher said the project includes community development block grants, and is contingent on Tax Increment Financing, which involves the city providing a loan via bonds and the company’s property taxes being allocated to pay that back over a set period of years.
He will return to the council later in June to finalize a memorandum of understanding on arrangements.
Butcher also told the council DARI will become the city’s largest wastewater customer.
Though a financing effort submitted to the legislature by Sen. Jana Hughes was not successful in the end, Butcher said the dairy lobby and others were important in backing Seward’s efforts to get funding for its biggest-ever public works project.
The city recently obtained a 30-year, $38 million State Revolving Fund loan at 1.5% interest for the wastewater project.
Parker Baby Co.
consolidates here
Good Life Ltd, doing business as Parker Baby Co., which was created by Sam and Kirsten (Kohlway) Huebner, purchased Lot 18 for $533,988.
Huebner is a 2011 graduate of Concordia and started Parker Baby after he and his wife had twins 10 years ago. The company acquires, warehouses and sells a variety of baby products working through third-party warehouses in Los Angeles, Dallas and Salt Lake City.
Parker Baby will consolidate those warehouses in Seward, from which it can ship via United Parcel Service anywhere in the United States in two days or less.
The Huebners are now living in Colorado with their non-warehouse staff working remotely, but he said his family of six looks forward to moving back to Seward.
“We really felt pulled back to Seward,” he said.
A warehouse manager who also has a family of six will move here as well, and Huebner said they plan to grow an in-person team in Seward.
“We pride ourselves in hiring the right people,” he said, noting they look for people who will fit into the business culture, knowing they can train them for the positions.
Parker Baby hopes to break ground as soon as August to be up and running in Seward next year.
