In 2014, the owners of seven peanut buying points and 228 peanut farmers across south Georgia came together to form Premium Peanut LLC and build the most state-of-the-art shelling facility in the country. Later that year, Premium Peanut shipped out its first batch of shelled peanuts destined for national and international distribution.
Throughout the process, Georgia Quick Start helped Premium Peanut train its employees and develop customized work instructions for use in the facility. Wiregrass Technical College also supported this unique endeavor.
“For us, Quick Start was a godsend,” said Lee Taylor, Premium Peanut human resources director. “We were able to provide Quick Start the equipment our employees would be using, and they build a training plan for us based on what we gave them.”
Quick Start also trained employees on various automated control systems, including its Satake USA-brand “optical sorters.”
“It was a big deal because there was no one around that could train all this,” he said. “No one knew the business; it was a new industry in this part of the state.”
Douglas, Georgia
Premium Peanut is committed to producing quality products for our customers while maximizing the value of each peanut through operational innovations and excellence.
Wiregrass Technical College
“I give Quick Start five stars across the board.”
— Lee Taylor, Premium Peanut Human Resources Director
Trucks full of raw peanuts line up at Premium Peanut receiving. Peanuts are unloaded and the first step of sorting whole peanuts from foreign debris is done by screens and shakers; they are then stored for future processing.
Highly specialized equipment such as the 8410 PAS Shaker Cleaner pictured above further separates the peanuts from heavy particles such as sticks and rocks before the process of shelling and grading begins.
Premium Peanut employee Tony Brock adjusts the reject gates on the Marc 500 Gravity Separator to allow heavier particles to exit the gates, furthering the cleaning process.
Using the state-of-the-art Satake USA Evolution® “optical sorter,” each peanut is sorted and separated using camera images that have pre-programmed parameters to detect subtle shade and color differences, foreign material and other defects.
W.A. Carver, Premium Peanut production manager, stands in front of a mountain of fresh peanuts.
