Production
We listed inventory management on the same line as production because in the current climate of seed treatments, multiple technology vendors and wide germplasm availability, inventory management has become nearly as important as production quality. Why do we say that? Because if a company makes incorrect inventory decisions they are saddled with overhead costs that eat away at profit, slow or limit new product introductions, and force higher costs on you. Let's look at how iCORN handles both its production and inventory management and how that benefits our customers.
Production
We are very fortunate to partner with a company that we consider to be the best in the business in seed corn production. Remington Hybrid Seed company based in Remington Indiana is our production partner. They are the leading contract producer of seed corn in the U.S. Notice that I didn't say the largest (although they are the largest) I said "leader", and the reason I say that is that seed corn and soybeans are their entire life blood. Since production is all they do, they have an intense focus on doing everything they can to produce and bag the highest quality seed possible. If they fail in this goal they are out of business!
Remington has historically been an industry leader in acquiring and implementing new technologies and methods that help produce the highest quality seed possible. An example would be the color eye sorters they use to eliminate damaged or discolored seed. Remington aggressively adopted and implemented this technology in their facilities. By doing so they not only bagged higher quality seed but reduced the amount of good seed that was discarded with bad seed via the old method of gravity table only cleaning. This not only allowed them to bag higher quality seed but reduce their good seed discard which helps keep our (and your) costs down.
We also utilize Remington as a winter production partner which allows us to quickly respond to market trends and augment supplies when needed. Remington's size and scope allow them to be a leader in this field as well.
Even though we only sell in a three state area, our production is spread out from Michigan to Iowa which gives us supply security when localized weather issues arise.
The best part of our arrangement with Remington is this; should production quality become a problem, we are not saddled with poor seed and forced to throw it away (increasing your costs) or blend it in with good seed in order to sell it. If the seed does not meet our standards, we can simply reject it! All our seed is quality tested by a third party testing company called Indiana Crop Improvement association which is an industry leader in many areas. Because we don't have internal testing there is no pressure on the QA people to approve borderline lots for sale.
Inventory Management
Although a little discussed part of the seed business, inventory management has become a critical factor in the seed business. If a company does a poor job and is stuck with old or poor performing hybrids, they eventually will be forced to either throw it away or use it as free replant seed. Both of which are bad for their customers. Through our partnership with Remington and because of their national size and scope, we are able to quickly move into and out of supplies of both high performing and low performing hybrids. A hybrid may not do well in Indiana but may be having a great year in Iowa or Nebraska where weather conditions were different. When we see a hybrid that may not be having a good year, we immediately try to reduce the supply and conversely when we walk plots in August if we suspect a hybrid is bound for a good year, we quickly attempt to augment our supply.
Not being laden with large inventories of old germplasm has another very important benefit to you besides lower costs. The most important aspect of this arrangement is that we tend to move into newer genetics in larger quantities much more quickly than other companies because we don't have to sell out our inventory first. This is one of the main reasons farmers see us consistently perform well in third party trials; we are early adopters (in quantity) of the newest genetics because we have very low levels of old inventory. This has obvious performance benefits to our customers in addition to lower overhead costs.
