Perry Milling buys Blair Feeds, plans future for Atchison site

Perry Milling is taking over Blair Feeds & Elevator, giving the 1867 Atchison site a chance to survive after its April closure and keep serving the county’s farm economy. The deal puts a long-used grain and feed property back into play, but not as an immediate reopening for workers or customers.

Blair Feeds traces its roots to 1867, when E. K. Blair and W. W. Auld established a mill in Atchison. Historical accounts describe the early site as including a brick elevator with a 15,000-bushel capacity, and later records say the Blair family business was carried through five generations. For a city built on river trade, that kind of continuity mattered: Atchison was founded in 1854 and grew into a transportation and commercial hub because of its Missouri River location.

Perry Milling said it will begin facility improvements first, with the initial work aimed at operational efficiency, production capacity and preparing the property for future growth. The company said the Atchison facility will not reopen right away and that it will announce a timeline later, after the upgrades are determined. For Atchison County farmers and livestock producers, that means the near-term question is not just who owns the building, but how quickly grain service and feed access can be restored on the ground.

The company buying the site is not a small operator. Kansas State University Extension described owner Shane Curry as a Waverly native who attended Kansas State University and Emporia State University and later rose to vice president at Cerner. Extension also said Perry Milling’s growth made it one of the largest independent feed companies in Kansas after an Emporia acquisition, and the company says it operates as a locally owned custom feed mill offering bulk and bagged feed, pet food and farm supplies, including organic and non-GMO feed.

The Atchison property still fits the business Perry Milling says it wants to run. The site’s grain-elevator infrastructure should help with grain procurement and support feed production across the company’s wider network, tying the old plant to a larger Kansas supply chain. That also echoes the city’s earlier role in agricultural commerce: Kansas historical sources say flour and feed milling had become the state’s leading industry by the mid-1880s, when grain elevators dotted the landscape and Atchison mills were handling 20,000 to 25,000 cars of grain each year while shipping 4,000 to 5,000 cars of finished wheat and corn products.